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PERSOJ^AL PREJUDICES 



^ ■■ ^ ■^ gW^ -^! KT K i^ '^ i« ^'^8^yg..V^ 




>PR-CLIPSTON STURGIS 
^/ 

THE RANDOM REFLECTIONS 

OFA 

GRANDMOTHER 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDOE 



\ 



M ' Vfeit^^avva w-^B^ y^^V5 x - vsa^ -< Kt>.^^ ^ 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ESTHER MARY STL'RGIS 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



©CU597434 

SEP IP^I'29 



TO 

HARRIET LOCKWOOD CARTER 

HER MOTHER AND MINE 

HER GRANDMOTHER AND MINE 

I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK IN MEMORY OF 

THE UNBROKEN FRIENDSHIP OF 

THREE GENERATIONS 



PREFACE 

BY THE author's HUSBAND 

THE woman who wrote this book is a 
past-mistress in the arts of her sex; 
delicate flattery and gross exaggeration 
come ^^dth equal facility-. I fancy she was 
tired of \mting the book before she had 
finished the last chapter (or the first, I 
forget which), so, when her publisher sug- 
gested adding a preface, she at once turned 
her attention to me. 

She began with the familiar phrase, " Do 
you love me, dear?" and I prompth' re- 
plied, "Not if it's upstairs." Then followed 
the usual process of persuasion on her part 
and clumsy, futile eft'ort to escape on my 
part. From the first gentle phrase until my 
complete acknowledgement of defeat, there 
was not the shadow of a doubt about the 
result. I would do what I was told to do, 
and do it with a cheerful countenance. The 
attack (after that gentle opening phrase) 
began something like this: "I have always 
vii 



PREFACE 

iulinirccl the way >ou work on the train; I 
think >'Oiir ability to concenti'ato in such a 
l^hico is marvellous." It seems absurd, but 
>ou know how it is; this indelicate llattery 
made me feel that my tine (jualities were 
reall)' ai)preciated, and aUhoui;h this sim- 
ple little method had been applied over and 
o\er again, it was just as elTective as if it 
were brand-new. Well, it is no use going on 
and explaining this familiar process; it is, 
1 fancy, not unfamiliar to the male readers 
of this book, and it explains why 1 am 
writing this preface. 

Let me say at the outset, with her fa- 
\-ourite avscription of "Thank the pigs," 
that this book at least is not about me. and 
I shall not be looked ujxmi as pusillanimous 
because T do not apj^h' for a di\'orce, or 
e\ en enter a suit for libel, as w^as the case 
with her first venture. We all like to feel 
that we have our private virtues, but fn^n 
the first page of that book to the last there 
was no privacy' left. l\ly innocent kne of 
the country', my kindness to and thought- 
fulness for her (for after the hrst twenty- 

viii 



PREFACE 

livo >oars of anintn suiniucrs 1 no lc)ni;or 
insisted iiiH)n hor aca>ni[)an> ing luo), my 
c'hcort 111 acquiescence in her long- absences, 
o\cn across the water, all Avcre as nothing 
coniparotl to her desire to see nie writhe 
under her facile wit. 

So, thank the pigs, 1 sa>-, 1 am out of it 
this time, and others take m> place. I can 
therefore cheerfully reconnnend this lxx>k 
to any readers. It is not innnoral, and 
therefore not really modern; but I lune an 
idea that we are returning to a saner iwint 
of view, and good and homeh- qualities are 
once more coming in for their share of 
attention. This jMohibition craze is (Mie of 
the symptoms of returning heallii; we are 
all apt to overdo things when we are carried 
awa>' In- an idea, and a little purging, like 
the blood-letting of an earlier generation, 
will do no harm. We old folk will manage 
to get along, and the next generation, or 
the next after, will return to a sane tem- 
perance. 

So this book is quite harmless; an>' one 
can use it with propriety; even those who 
ix 



PREFACE 

were shocked at the loose morals of dear 
Ethel, the " Young Visiter," will find noth- 
ing here to bring a blush of shame to the 
cheek. 

The victims will suffer, of course, as I did 
before, but also like me, will perhaps rather 
enjoy the suffering for pride in the skill 
which so accurately picked out the best 
places to stick the pins in. 

I am directed to make due acknowledge- 
ment to the North American Review for 
permission to reprint the chapter "Quality 
versus Equality," and I am impelled by my 
own sense of justice to make acknowledge- 
ment to the favourite nephew and niece 
and to the dear lady around the corner for 
having allowed themselves to be butchered 
to make a lady's holiday and to furnish ob- 
jects for the betterment of mankind. 

Since writing the above — and I confess 
I thought my job was done — I have 
glanced through the book, and find to my 
dismay that I did not get off scot-free even 
this time. "Gardens" has a rather familiar 



PREFACE 

sound, and I suspect I am buried some- 
where in that garden; and if I had even 
glanced at the title of "Husbands and 
Housekeeping," I might have guessed that 
if she was going to make use of anybody's 
husband, it would probably be her own. 
Notwithstanding this, however, I can still 
recommend the book to the earnest con- 
sideration of the reader. Many a true word 
is spoken in jest, and many a statement 
which the world calls false is in reality the 
deeper truth. 

One thing I sincerely hope this book will 
help to do, and that is to awaken afresh 
that unselfish and patriotic enthusiasm 
which carried us into and through the War, 
which brought us so close to England and 
France and Italy, and made us feel the 
deep, true, human friendship between all 
those nations who stood so firmly together 
for Truth, Righteousness, and Honour. 



CONTENTS 

Preface by the Author's Husband vii 

I. Gardens i 

II. Husbands and Hol'sekeeping 19 

III. Al'tres Temps, Autres Mceurs ;^j 

I\'. The Lost Art of Letter-Writing 53 

\'. 'My Bolshevist 71 

\'I. Old Friends 93 

VII. New Acquaintances 121 

VIII. House AND Home 137 

IX. Quality versus Equality 167 

X. Differences and Distinctions 1S9 

Epilogue by the Favourite Nephew 217 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 

I 

GARDENS 



PEP^SONAL PP^EJUDICES 
I 

GARDENS 

A FRIEND has submitted to me for 
criticism a manuscript, the subject- 
matter of which deals with Gardens. Not 
just plain gardens, you understand, but 
Gardens, with a capital. 

I am a good deal flattered by this trib- 
ute of its author to my sense of honour- 
able impartiality, because my views on the 
subjects of the countr>^ in general and 
gardens in particular are not looked upon 
with the respect that I feel to be their due. 
I seem to have given the impression that 
because I object to the necessity of taking 
a train journey to town every day I do not 
love the country', and because I dislike the 
smell of manure I must perforce have a 
repugnance to flowers. I prefer not to 
argue the matter. I merely state my con- 
viction that just because I stand aside 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



from a too intimate association with the 
country on the one hand, and do not per- 
sonally tackle the manure-heap on the 
other, my judgement with regard to both 
is unquestionably the less prejudiced and 
more impartial. In fact, I claim that 
breadth of vision which, proverbially, is 
impossible of attainment when there is a 
too great familiarity. I also vehemently 
deny the accusation of my friends that my 
breadth of vision precludes the possibility 
of any knowledge of such matters, and I 
deeply resent their implication that, for the 
same reason, my judgement in all other 
affairs of this workl is thereby necessarily 
impaired. 

I had an argument about this the other 
day with a dear friend, whose kindly heart 
is much troubled over my delinquencies 
in many matters other than gardens and 
the country. In a cos}-, tea-table discussion 
of our various friends, she expressed warmly 
her approbation of those who made a prac- 
tice of spending every week-end through- 
out the winter at their country places, 

4 



CARDEXS 

saying that she thought it siicii a hoahh>" 
and wholesome thing to do. 1 made no rash 
admissions, but told her I would grant her 
this simply for the sake of argument; and 
even if sueh were true, what in the world 
had my feelings with regard to the eountr>- 
got to do with my opinions regarding the 
restlessness of the human raee? I tried to 
point out to her that my conelusions might 
be the same if the people who lived in the 
country- took to spending their Sunda^•s in 
town, only I should feel that it would be 
less of a change and excitement for them, 
as they spend most of the week in town 
an^-^vay. I offered all this humbly, just as 
a possible one among a number of different 
opinions, but she would ha\e none of it, 
and turning her conveniently deaf ear, 
she left me, quite con\ineed that because 
I am accused of not lo\-ing the countr\-, 
there is nothing of orthodoxy about me. 
As her opinion is shared b>- the majority of 
my small world, I live a life bowed down 
by obloquy; consequently the subtle flat- 
ter}' of my friend, the author of the manu- 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



script in question, is all the more gratifying, 
and I am convinced that he has written a 
most charming and valuable article. 

I am not sure that I am entirely quali- 
fied to soar to the empyrean heights to 
which he would carry his readers for, start- 
ing with the Garden of Eden, he ends up 
with a satisfactory- resting-place for his 
soul. I have pondered over his theories, 
and I belie^'e that I can meet him in his 
conclusions, though my path to that de- 
sirable end may not be identical. I truly 
feel that if all gardens beha^'e as do those 
in which I take a personal, if vicarious, 
interest, they must be excellent discipline 
for an>'body's soul. 

1 have seen my husband dig in the 
earth with his own hands, in order to save 
the cost of paid labour, till the honest 
sweat poured from his brow and his hands 
were blistered, onl>- to find that nothing 
short of a sevent^-five-dollar load of ma- 
nure would render his plot of ground habit- 
able for the flowers he wished to grow. I 
ha\e seen a friend arise at 4.30 A.M. day 




GARDEXS 

after da\- of glorious summer moms, to 
tend with sleepless care her charming and 
ver^' large garden of old-fashioned and 
sweet-smelling tiowers, onh- to lind, when 
at its height of bloom and beaut\-, that it 
has been attacked and exterminated in a 
single night by battalions of moles. I have 
seen my sister industrioush- plant blue 
asters, only to have them come up a pe- 
culiarly unpleasant admixture of purple 
pink and magenta. Even I ha\-e had my 
own personal experiences. 

I was called upon by a despairing friend, 
one ver\- hot day, to till, with two or three 
dozen plants of the last-named variet\', a 
3-awning hole in her garden caused by one 
or another of the many vicissitudes at- 
tendant upon the joys of gardening. It 
was warm — oh, ven,- warm; the kind of 
weather in which even to sit still induces 
a healthful activit\' of the pores, but I 
was fond of my friend, and ver}- sony for 
her. 

The three dozen infant plants were pre- 
sented to me in a large basket. hea\-^- with 



PERSOXAL PREJUDICES 



the implements attendant upon their birth 
into the garden world. I lugged them across 
the spacious lawn and down the long garden 
path, and, mopping my brow, I dwelt in 
thought upon the loveliness of the little 
baby buds, just pinkly ready to burst into 
tlower. I mused upon their poetic mission 
to beautify toil and rehabilitate with 
bloom the waste places of the earth, and 
as I toiled I pictured the brave show that 
would greet the en^•ious eyes of the mem- 
bers of the Garden Club at their meeting a 
few days hence. 

]\Iy task was not brief, and was not 
accomplished without much mental and 
physical discipline, but at its end I sur- 
\-e>'ed my work with pride and admiration. 
I felt tliat I had earned a rest, and retired 
to the bathtub with a strong conviction 
that I had acquired much merit. Two brief 
hours later, cooled oft" and refreshed in 
lx>dy and temper, I revisited the scene of 
m>- labours. Ever>' single one of those 
sturdy little plants had been eaten, by the 
grasshoppers, down to within an inch of 

8 



GARDENS 

the ground. No wonder my friend the 
author writes feehngh-: "Only in the gar- 
den that we plant with our tired hands 
and water with the tears of frequent dis- 
appointment, can we gather the flower of 
a responsive soul." I feel just that way 
about it myself. 

My friend writes feelingly and from the 
heart, for he has a charming garden of his 
own. From the doorsteps of his picturesque 
white cottage drop three slightly intoxi- 
cated but truly friendly little terraces, each 
with its special duty to perform. The first 
is the custodian of two ancient hawthorn 
trees, said to have been in existence when 
Louis-Philippe abode for a time in the 
modest obscurity of this humble home. 
The legend runs that branches of these, in 
full bloom, were sent to him in Paris on a 
later and more public occasion, and my 
practical mind wonders as to their con- 
dition upon arrival, after a vo^'age the 
length of which must have rivalled in time 
that of the boats of these post-war da^'s. 
One of the trees is pink, the other white, 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



and when they burst simultaneously into 
full bloom, their dainty loveliness is 
equalled only l)y their jierfumc, which is 
of such a nature that the windows of the 
cottage must be kept closed and the in- 
habitants thereof hold their noses when 
they take their walks abroad. 

From these ancient sentinels a flight of 
grey stone steps, uncertain as to pitch or 
level, lead down to the second terrace 
which is the home of the flowers. A hedge 
of luiglish box guards the beds, and nobly 
strives to fulhl its duties in spite of many 
vicissitudes. To the best of its sturdy abil- 
ity it braves the north-east storms and 
sub-zero temperature, but an occasional 
plant will iKTforce succumb and die, leav- 
ing a gap like that of a lost tooth. Here, 
my friend lets loose his love for flowers, 
and from the lowh' pansy he riots madly 
up through lilies, poppies, peonies, and 
foxgloves to the towering blue larkspur 
which gives the final obliterating touch to 
any efl'ect of terracing; but, as he wisely 
says, "Anybody with a soul prefers a 

lo 



GAKPENS 

frenzy of flowers to a sense of proportion"; 
and he is quite rii;lit. 

From this floAver\- terrace a flight of six 
or seven steps, that aspire to better le\el 
than their more ancient brethren above, 
drop to the third terrace, a grassy spot, 
permit tetl, as to decoration, onh' an edit- 
ing of flowers on one side. It is surrounded 
by a Hhic hedge some eight feet in height 
which, being subject to birth control, is 
not j)ermitted to flower, and so de\-otes all 
its energies to growing fat and flourishing. 
It surrounds a good-sized plot of lawn 
destined, I believe, for tlie ancient and 
honourable game of bowls, but a certain 
bumpiness of the sward seems to have 
discouraged the eflort. On these three 
fragrant terraces T have watched my friend 
dig with his own tired hands and water 
with the tears of a whole lot of disappoint- 
ments, till I have seen that responsixe soul 
rise before my very e^^es. It looked just 
like mosquitoes. 

My friend is of a poetic temperament, 
which leads him on from flight to further 

II 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



flight, in the Hkening of the lover of a 
garden to that of a lover to his maid. 
There may be something in this theon,'. 
He speaks of the "hectic days of doubt," 
and voices in chaste metaphor the really 
intelligent discovery that quite often what 
agrees best with a maid, as well as with a 
garden, is to be let alone for a while and 
not to be bothered with too many atten- 
tions. Now this is really practical and to 
be commended, but when he carries out 
the simile to its logical conclusions, and 
compares a later relationship to the "se- 
curity" of married life, I don't feel so sure 
about it. I only know that if any wife of 
mine behaved with the exasperating per- 
versity of some gardens, my present views 
on divorce would undergo a radical change. 
I can quite see that gardens are a good 
deal like women in that one never knows 
what they are going to do, but while I 
acknowledge this clement of surprise and 
unexpectedness to be one of a woman's 
chief charms, it does not appeal to me one 
bit in a garden. It must be so disconcerting 

12 



GARDEXS 

to plant blue asters and have them come 
up magenta, or to plant celer\' and have it 
turn out to be a squash. That this fre- 
quently happens I am quite sure from my 
experiences with the vegetable garden at 
our country- place, in Avhich my husband 
takes such joy. For some years now he has 
industriously planted peas, a vegetable to 
which I am particularly addicted, and of 
which he annually promises me a generous 
supply, but somehow or other, by the time 
they get into glass jars and up to town, 
they have all turned into string beans. 

I think I must submit this manuscript 
to a particular friend of mine who is a 
farmer — a real one — and get his opinion 
about it, for I am sure the author would be 
benefited by the criticism of a practical 
gardener, and the gardener would be — 
well, I am not quite sure what he would be, 
but I should love to see the expression of 
his face if I attempted to persuade him 
that his cabbages and onions had souls. I 
have never happened to meet a realh- soul- 
ful grower of vegetables, and perhaps this 

13 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



is the reason why my author friend omits 
all mention of kitchen gardens in his ele- 
vating article. I regret the omission deeply, 
for I feel that I could be led to wax exactly 
as poetic over green peas and asparagus as 
over poppies and peonies. If I could have 
carried something of the kind to my farmer 
friend, it might cheer up his outlook upon 
life, which is just now one of the deepest 
pessimism. I tried to buy a few cabbages 
from him last autumn, and he enquired 
sardonically if I s' posed he was goin' to 
grow kebbidges when every durn one he 
riz jumped his taxes on him. It took a 
little lightning calculation on my part to 
connect cause and effect, but when he 
added that he had just made out his 
income-tax papers, I understood and sym- 
pathized. He grew quite eloquent beneath 
the warmth of my sympathy, and pro- 
ceeded to explain matters from his point 
of view. 

"Now, you jest look at that there keb- 
bidge," he pleaded. " It takes me and three 
other farm-hands to raise it so's it'll be 



14 



GARDE XS 

like what it oughter be — a good, self- 
respectin' kebbidge, so to speak; where 'm 
I goin' to get the men to work? An' if I get 
'em, how in thunder 'm I goin' to pay 'em 
the wages the^' want? ]\Iore'n that," he 
continued, "by the time that kebbidge 
gets to the table o' any o' you cit\* folk, it 
'11 ha' ben handled by six other fellers after 
it leaves my farm, an' ever>- dum one of 
'em gets more out o' that kebbidge than 
either you or me ever does." 

This was coming down to practicalities 
with a bump. 

"What are 3-ou going to do about it?" I 
enquired. 

He shifted his quid of tobacco and so 
surprised a potato-bug strolling on the cab- 
bage in question, that it tumbled off back- 
wards. "Nothin'," he replied laconically. 

"But in that case," I wailed, "where 
shall I get my cabbages?" 

"Grow 'em yourself." was the firm reply; 
"it's what all the folks '11 have to be doin' 
prett\' soon." 

Evidently tlie practical farmer under- 

15 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



estimates that joy in labour, which is pic- 
tured by the author when he attributes to 
Adam and Eve a growing satisfaction in 
work after their expulsion from Eden. My 
personal experience with farm-hands is 
limited, but I can quite understand that 
they seldom burst into poetic paraphrase 
upon the birth of a carrot, and I am per- 
fectly certain that posterity, in any line 
of labour, is scandalously content to "eat 
dates" whenever, and for just so long, as 
they are paid for doing so. I think that on 
the whole it would be better not to show 
my author friend's article to my farmer 
friend ; I am afraid he would not appreciate 
it. I shall send it instead to the Department 
of Internal Revenue in Washington where 
they are even more sadly in need of souls. 

In his closing paragraph my friend the 
author attempts to carry me into a realm 
of imager}^ where I am incapable of follow- 
ing. He writes: 

"Delights and discouragements, rewards 
and failures, smiles and tears, these are the 
elements out of which is created the soul of 
16 



GARDENS 



a garden, and as each is met with patience 
and humour, work and play, we find that 
we, in turn, have found the garden of our 
souls." 

I am sure that this is a perfectly beauti- 
ful thought, but as I labour to reduce it to 
a working formula, I find myself helplessly 
perplexed. Am I to create a soul for my 
garden, and then go and plant my own 
ready-made soul alongside it? I should hes- 
itate to do that because, after my personal 
and vicarious experiences, I should feel no 
certainty as to what m\' soul would come 
up after I had planted it. I might plant my 
pure, white, woman's soul, and then, like 
those blue asters that came up magenta, 
it might come up a pink he-devil. For- 
tunately I am not gardening just at present, 
and there is plenty of time to consult my 
friend about this. 

It is a good article, though, and I shall 
certainly advise its publication. 



II 

HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 



II 

HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

I HAVE just returned from a delightful 
summer vacation. For two glorious 
months I have repudiated my family, my 
town house and my country house, and 
have sat placidly in the homes of various 
hospitable friends and relatives, watching 
with an interest, not untinged with vindic- 
tive glee, their wrestlings with the various 
problems, domestic and other, which beset 
my own path through these days of ques- 
tionable peace. 

I refrain from mentioning the condition 
in which I found my town residence when 
I regretfully obeyed an inconvenient con- 
science and returned to duty. In a weak 
moment I had yielded to the pleadings of 
my men-folk to allow them "just to sleep 
in the house" throughout the week. "Who 
will make your beds?" I enquired. "Oh, 
we will make them ourselves," was the 
eager reply. I have seen beds made by 

21 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



"ourselves" before, and regarded those 
two men with a stern and ironic eye, but 
their faces showed such pathetic pleading 
that I hesitated and was lost. Untrue to 
every principle within me, I compromised. 
I procured the services of the caretaker of 
a neighbouring house to come to my as- 
sistance, and she contracted to make the 
two beds, restore to their proper bars the 
bath-towels that a man invariably hangs 
up on the floor, and to keep clean a limited 
section of two dressing-tables. I said noth- 
ing, either to her or to my men-folk, about 
keeping the windows closed during the day 
in order to keep out the dust, because I 
knew full well that in one case it would be 
a mere waste of breath, and in the other 
would probably be regarded as too much 
work. I judged upon my return that they 
had remained permanently open through- 
out the months of July and August. 

We have lived in this house a good many 
years, and owing to war and other exi- 
gencies we have not been able to keep it up 
as we could wish, consequently dilapida- 

22 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

tion verged upon decay, and repairs ne- 
cessitated the presence of workmen in 
pretty much every room in the house. I 
have been married some forty years now, 
and I ought to have known better, but I 
was weak-minded enough to urge my hus- 
band to get the work started in good sea- 
son. Also I was so ill-advised as to allude, 
just once, in my letters to him throughout 
the weeks of my absence, to some rugs 
that were to be sent to the cleaners. I re- 
ceived in reply one of those I-must-bear- 
with-her- patiently letters saying, "Please 
don't WORRY about those rugs; they have 
gone." They had; but they didn't come 
back till I went after them. Most of the 
repairs were partly finished upon my re- 
turn, which is doing pretty well for a man, 
but they did not begin to work on the 
furnace — which necessitated running new 
pipes up through the house — until after 
I had cleaned the two top floors. I finally 
got the workmen out and the house fit to 
live in, but there are times when I feel that 
house-cleaning is an unappreciated phi- 

23 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



lanthrophy. I, personally, with my own 
hands, cleaned some fifteen hundred of the 
several thousand books in our library. I 
removed them singly from the shelf, wiped, 
on both sides, top and bottom, every in- 
dividual book, washed the shelf, and gave 
a final wipe to the book before returning 
it to its place, and when I had finished, 
I regarded the shining rows with aching 
pride. Upon my husband's return I pointed 
out to him my achievement, and suggested 
a few changes that I thought might be 
made to advantage in the arrangement of 
the volumes. He quite agreed with me, 
and as he replaced the last book a friend 
dropped in to welcome us back to town. 
My husband went forward, all charms and 
smiles to greet her. "I am so sorry I can't 
shake hands," he said, waggling his hands 
suggestively in front of him, "but I have 
just been handling these dirty books." 

I am obliged to add a new maid to my 
staff this year. This is unfortunate be- 
cause nobody wants to go into domestic 
service any more; however, I sent out my 

24 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

appeal for help. The first applicant rang 
the doorbell, and I opened the door myself. 
The figure that stood there wore a large 
hat, with feathers of such dimensions that 
my eyes involuntarily measured the en- 
trance in hasty calculation. A rather pleas- 
ant face looked out from beneath the 
structure on her head, and she announced, 
a little questioningly : "I'm the lady that 
heard help was wa-anted here." "Oh," 
said I. "Well, I'm the woman that wants 
it. Come right in." 

She had her points, so I engaged her; 
this was Wednesday, and she promised 
faithfully to come on the following Mon- 
day. Having settled the matter I devoted 
my mind to other affairs, not omitting an 
occasional expression of gratitude to a 
kind fate that had placed no greater diffi- 
culties in my way of obtaining domestic 
assistance. On Saturday afternoon I an- 
swered a call on the telephone. "I'm the 
wan you was talkin' to the other day, and 
I've decided not to come." I opened my 
mouth to make remarks, but promptly 

25 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



shut it again, and silently hung up the 
receiver. Really, there did not seem to be 
anything to say. 

My next applicant was a very nice-look- 
ing young woman who had never "lived 
out before," but had kept house for an 
uncle. She was entirely untrained, and 
admitted quite frankly that she would 
have to be taught every particular of do- 
mestic work, but of course the wages were 
to be the same as those of a perfectly 
trained and responsible woman. That was 
inevitable, and I agreed; after which I 
considered that it was my turn to make 
demands. "What wages do you propose to 
give me for training you?" I asked with 
smiling finnness. "I do not expect you to 
work without wages — why should you 
expect me to do so?" That young person 
was endowed with a decent sense of square 
dealing, so we came to an amicable ar- 
rangement on the above basis, and she 
promised faithfully to come to me bright 
and early on the morning of three days 
hence. I spent the night before that prom- 
26 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

ised day out of town, and I arose with the 
lark in order to be at my house in good 
time to receive the new inmate. I arrived 
there even before the postman who, when 
he came, dcHvered to me a postcard con- 
taining the information that — " My sister 
won't hear on me hving in the cit}'." Truly, 
I consider it quite altruistic on my part 
that my first thought should have been 
a hasty mental survey of my suburban 
friends in search of any who might avail 
themselves of this domestic phenomenon. 
Usually it is impossible to find a maid 
who will even consider living out of town, 
and most of my friends and acquaintances 
who love the country so much that they 
live there, are doing their own work. 

I have now engaged a third person, who 
has "faithfully promised" to come on a 
certain date, but I have no reason to sup- 
pose that she will do so. I wonder what we 
are going to do about it all. Most of us 
have theories on the subject, and many of 
my friends have various suggestions to 
offer in the line of reform. One of the sug- 

27 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



gestions is a plan to have a sort of factory- 
like arrangement, where domestic service 
will be carried on in shifts of a certain 
number of hours. I understand that one 
batch would come in and work two or 
three hours, and would then be succeeded 
by another batch, and the process repeated 
until the employers of each family-factory- 
force are ready to go to bed. Of course this 
arrangement might conceivably succeed in 
getting the work done, after a fashion, but 
it does n't permit much of the human ele- 
ment to enter in. Heaven knows, there is 
little enough personal attachment between 
servants and their employers as it is, but 
if this sort of thing obtained, one might 
just as well be served by a hay tedder — 
and I am inclined to think that the dinner 
dishes would be handled in much the same 
fashion as is the hay. Another trouble 
would be that one could never remember 
the names of the individuals of some four 
or five shifts of four or five persons each. 
I am already getting to that age when I 
begin with any familiar name, and go 
28 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

through the nomenclature of the family 
till I inadvertently strike the name I want : 
"Jenny — Bessie — Margaret — Mary." 
It would be a fearful mental effort to learn 
all the names to begin with, and never in 
the world could I find time to go through 
ten or fifteen names for the purpose of giv- 
ing an order in a hurr}-. I don't know what 
is supposed to happen if one is taken ill, or 
needs any service in the night. I only know 
that if my family were all away, I should 
object strenuously to sleeping alone in the 
house, and that under no circumstances 
whatever could I be induced to arise from 
my bed and crawl through the unwarmed 
passages of a dark house at 6.30 of a cold 
winter's morning for the purpose of ad- 
mitting the first shift at the back door. 
No. I have no opinion at all of that plan 
for the betterment of domestic difficulties. 
Personally I have not got much beyond 
theories of cause, but until I can think of 
some better suggestion than this, I make 
no apologies for keeping quiet. 

I am inclined to think that the cause may 
29 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



lie partly in the world-wide spirit of unrest 
which pervades every age and every class, 
and is as rampant among the rich as with 
the poor. Youth is fidgety beyond ex- 
pression, and we older ones escape it only 
in the degree to which we are lazy or en- 
ergetic. I have a young friend who could 
not sit still for five minutes if she tried. She 
has a house in town, a house in the country, 
where they often spend a few days, and a 
house at the seaside, where they frequently 
spend Sundays. And she has let her town 
house and hired another around the cor- 
ner to live in. I enquired about her domestic 
arrangements with a good deal of interest, 
but she did not seem to be very clear in her 
mind about them. So far as I could under- 
stand, a telephone operator was taking 
care of the children. I was anxious to know 
the modus operandi, but was left in doubt 
as to whether the operator had left her 
post or was caring for the children by 
telephone. 

Personally, I find it bad enough to take 
care of my one town house (I have shuffled 

30 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

off the care of my country house on to 
the shoulders of my favourite niece) and 
nothing would induce me to own three 
houses and hire a fourth. I passed my 
young friend sitting on the steps of her 
house Number Four, gloomily surveying 
a procession of furniture and household 
effects being carried in at the front door. 
She was arrayed in a pair of green knicker- 
bockers ineffectually concealed by a rain- 
coat; her pretty hair curled flufiily against 
the green facing of her hat, and the ex- 
pression of melancholy that overspread her 
face only added to her charms. I asked if 
she had yet succeeded in getting a cook. 
"No," she replied in a tone of hopeless 
discouragement, "nobody seems to want 
to take the place." I was deeply sympa- 
thetic — with the cook. I doubt if I should 
like that situation, myself. 

I am not making any remarks about the 
wages that obtain to-day, the sum de- 
manded being the same for trained and un- 
trained work. We keep as few maids as 
possible in my household, and in order to 

31 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



pay them we go without all the other neces- 
saries of life. I have not bought a hat for 
three years and my husband has not had a 
new suit of clothes since the year of our 
Lord 1 9 14. I cannot say that the rise of 
payment for labour is none of my business, 
exactly, but I decline to accept any re- 
sponsibility for it; it has been none of my 
doing; but I am a very much mistaken old 
woman if the labour powers that be do not 
find, some day, that the trained workers of 
all industries will rise up and forcibly im- 
press upon them the injustice of the present 
rate of payment. They will have my warm 
sympathy, too. For a well-trained, well- 
mannered parlour-maid, for instance, who 
knows all the ins and outs of her work and 
does it well, to feel that any little red- 
headed, snub-nosed chit, fresh from a bog 
in Ireland or anywhere else, can demand 
and get exactly the same wages that she 
herself receives, must be too exasperating 
to be borne. If I were a well-trained serv- 
ant, I would not put up with it for one 
minute. If domestic-trained labour were to 

3-' 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

make a stand against such injustice, we 
employers would be none the worse off so 
far as money is concerned, for nine out of 
every ten employers could not possibly 
afford to pay a penny more than we pay 
now, so we should be obliged to content 
ourselves with untrained work, and the 
trained servant would be obliged either to 
marry, or to force her untrained sister into 
her proper place. 

I am occasionally tempted to wish that 
I were less conservative in the selection of 
the class of service I employ. It is really an 
obsession to feel that one can be served 
only by certain races, of a certain colour, 
and an approximately similar creed. A few 
of my acquaintances are broader-minded 
than I, and in their frequent chats over my 
afternoon tea-table wave flauntingly in my 
face their one Japanese servant who is 
butler, chambermaid and cook, or their 
Chinese cook who is an equally clever 
coiffeur, but I don't know; somehow or 
other I would as soon think of engaging a 
baboon to wait upon me. Also, I observe 

33 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



that they come to our house for meals a 
great deal more often than we are invited 
to theirs. 

A friend of mine has returned to first 
principles and, temporarily at all events, is 
at rest. She has a large farm on the out- 
skirts of a small town, and her struggles 
with the domestic problem were rapidly 
bringing her to an untimely grave. She im- 
ported maids from Ireland, she brought 
them over from England, she sought them 
out in the fastnesses of the mountain range 
that looms above her home, but each ac- 
quirement was more incompetent, and 
drove her more nearly distracted than the 
last. She has Southern affiliations, so it was 
not unnatural that in her desperation her 
mind should have turned in that direction 
for inspiration. After a few tentative exper- 
iments she succeeded in transplanting a 
sort of "ole Mrginny plantation life" into 
the slightly scandalized environs of an 
abolition town. She "owns" a middle-aged 
negress who adores her mistress, believes in 
a personal and material de^■il, and prefers 

34 



HUSBANDS AND HOUSEKEEPING 

to do the greater part of her work between 
the hours of lo p.m. and midnight. This 
invakiable person brought with her three 
ver>' young girls of wilHng heart and ques- 
tionable relationship to her and to each 
other. For each and all of these young rela- 
tives she is entirely responsible, and if they 
do not behave, she disciplines them with 
the business end of the coal sho^'el. Her 
cooking is No. i A, Southern, and if the 
meals are not served with that meticulous 
attention to the clock that obtains in the 
North, they are without question worth 
waiting for. I hastened home from a drive 
one morning, my lips framed with apolo- 
gies for being five minutes late for the 1.30 
luncheon hour, and was met by my hostess 
with a serene smile. " I am afraid luncheon 
will be a few moments late to-day," she 
said unapologeticall}' ; "Rose has just gone 
out to the garden to pick the corn." We sat 
down to our meal at 2.20, but any one who 
had the privilege of eating that dish of 
baked corn was oblivious of time or the 
hour. Any one of the four is willing to wash 

35 



PERSONA L PRE J UDl CES 



the do^s, run on errands, hunt for mislaid 
spectacles, or weed the garden, and I have 
not the slightest doubt that they would 
milk the cows or feed the pigs, were they 
lolcl to do so, and do it very well, too. Rose 
V,uards her mistress with ferocious care, and 
is so careful of her property that my friend 
is frequently unable to effect an entrance 
into her own house; but there are no strikes 
in that household, and no uncertainty as to 
who is mistress and who is maid. My friend 
may be reactionary, but she is uncom- 
monly comfortable. 



Ill 

AUTRICS TICMrS, AUI kICS MdCURS 



Ill 

AUTRES TEMPS, AUTRES IMCEURS 

THE truth is," I remarked reflectively 
to a friend and contemporary, "I 
ought to have died fifty years ago." 

" In that case you would not have had a 
very long life," he replied. (I do like men!) 
"Why?" 

He is as old as I am and has nearly as 
many grandchildren, but I was obliged to 
explain to him that I am a peace-loving and 
aged woman, and that the turmoil and un- 
rest of to-day were too new and too strange 
to be endured by one whose youth had been 
passed in decent and respectable times. 

It was a pouring, rainy day, and possibly 
this may have helped to cast a gentle tinge 
of melancholy over our reminiscences of the 
past and discussion of the present. There 
was no lack of material for either, and I 
really enjoyed talking to him, for though he 
is unfortunate in that he does not live in 
Boston, it is broadening to the mind to get 

39 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



an outsider's point of view occasionally. 
Besides, he is one of the few men I really 
trust. His wife is a suffragist, and if an^^body 
wants an illustration of real tact and dis- 
cretion, they will find it in the fact that, 
despite our intimacy of some forty years' 
standing, I have never been able to ascer- 
tain his personal views on the subject of 
suffrage and the vote. We began on this 
subject because I had recently been at- 
tacked from that direction by a near rela- 
tive with whose views I do not agree, and I 
was still a bit sore about it. 

It is infinitely more satisfactory to talk 
to men than to women because they do not 
take one so literally as do one's female 
friends, and the quiet self-assurance of their 
superiority is always restful. I am apt to 
accept their opinions (with reservations), 
so I naturally laid before my old friend 
some of the difficulties that I foresee in this 
evil of suffrage that is about to fall upon 
my sex. I am distinctly troubled by the 
prospect. When I was young, right was 
right and wrong was wrong, with the line 
40 



AUTRES TEMPS, AUTRES MCEURS 

as clearly marked as between black and 
white; life did not get all mixed up into a 
dirty grey as it does nowadays. If a matter 
was right, it was right; if it was wrong, it 
was wrong; if two duties clashed, we cheer- 
fully selected the most disagreeable, hap- 
pily convinced that the most disagreeable 
was the most virtuous, and let it go at that, 
simple souls that we were. Now, however, 
I find myself confronted by a situation in 
which I am going to do wrong whatever I 
do. No conviction that I own is more deeply 
rooted within me than the belief that for a 
woman to vote, is for her to commit a Sin. 
Not just a venial offence, but an act which 
comes under the head of some one, if not 
all, of the seven deadly sins. Now I am a 
lo3^al and patriotic soul, and if this amend- 
ment is irretrievably added to the Consti- 
tution, it becomes obligatory by law for me 
to vote; so there I am, on the horns of a 
dilemma. If I do not vote, I commit the 
deadly sin of breaking constitutional law, 
and if I do, I am perfectly sure that I shall 
commit every sin known to man — and 

41 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



there are plenty of them. Apparently my 
soul is headed straight for perdition in any 
case. I am full of resentment, anyway, that 
this burden of purifying politics should 
have been placed upon the shoulders of the 
oppressed and down-trodden race of moth- 
ers and housekeepers ; of all the problems 
in life that we are asked to tackle, this 
should have been the very last. Perhaps it 
is, for by the time we have solved it our 
race will be rendered extinct. I have no ob- 
jection to picking up the loose ends and 
polishing up a man's job when he has done 
his share, but with all the other things I 
have to do, I sec no reason why I should do 
his work as well as my own; and if politics 
is n't a man's job, I should like to know 
what is. Besides, it takes so many men to 
accomplish any one thing that I should lose 
all patience in working with them; which 
conviction was borne in upon me the other 
day when occasion arose to lay some brick 
outside my house. The space to be covered 
was one foot six inches by two feet six 
inches, and the number of bricks required 

42 



AUTRES TEMPS, AUTRES MCEURS 

was fifty-one. I know because I counted 
them after they were laid. I happened to be 
standing at my front door when the outfit 
arrived, and I watched the process with in- 
terest. A large two-horse team was halted, 
in its leisurely progress, before my house, 
turned (much to the annoyance of passing 
traffic), and solemnly backed up to the 
kerb. It contained one pail, one shovel, 
the requisite number of brick, and three 
stalwart men ; one to carry the bricks a dis- 
tance of fifteen feet, one to do the work, and 
the other to look on ; and it took them one 
hour and a half to do it. I could have car- 
ried the bricks home from the kiln, and done 
the work with my own two unaided hands 
in half an hour. I would have done so, too, 
only that the place was in the front of the 
house, and I am too considerate to scanda- 
lize my neighbours. It was a beautiful illus- 
tration of the masculine method in politics. 
Men do love to think they are busy; so, in- 
stead of being content with voting on elec- 
tion days, they go busily to work and hold 
something called primaries, where they 

43 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



proceed solemnly to vote who they would 
vote for if they were voting for anybody. 
It must be a hollow joy. Shall we women 
have to do that, too, I wonder? If so, the 
men need not trouble themselves over 
the suggestion to scrap the primaries; the 
women will do all the scrapping necessary. 
"How," I enquired of my friend, "could 
I fmd time to carry on work in such fash- 
ion? Last year I was an orphan asylum; 
this year I am a l^^ing-in hospital; I have 
charity board meetings, sewing circles, 
health committees to attend; meals to or- 
der and a husband to reckon with; kindly 
tell me when I should have time to do real 
voting, let alone i)rimarics?" 

Personally I should fmd it a fearful men- 
tal strain to decide which candidate I liked 
best, and whether it was my duty to stick 
to my party or to my preferences; and 
somehow or other I have a feeling that a 
woman's judgement would not be altogether 
unbiassed in such matters. The near rela- 
tive, alluded to above, came and sat on the 
edge of my bed before I was up the other 

44 



AUTRES TEMPS,AUTRES MCKUKS 

day, bursting with enthusiasm over a re- 
cently returned and very charming colonel 
of the A.E.F. She said that she thought he 
would make the fmcst President that the 
United States could possibly have, as he 
possessed exactly the qualities that would 
fit him for it; keen judgement, wonderful 
penetration, intimate knowledge of men, 
and marvellously wide sympathies. She 
glowed with pride as, in illustration of the 
last-named attribute, she described his inter- 
est in her grandchildren, and how instant 
had been his realization of the cleverness 
of one, the precocity of another, and the 
beauty of them all. " Did he, by any chance, 
tell you that they strongly resembled their 
grandmother?" I enquired. "Why — yes," 
she replied with a charming little elderly 
blush; "why do you ask?" 

I would really have liked advice on this 
vexed ciuestion, but the only suggestion 
my friend could make was that I might be- 
come a conscientious objector. I do not 
think, though, that I have fallen as low as 
that yet. 1 observe that one's conscience is 

45 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



most apt to object when the call upon it is 
something that one does not like. No; I 
should prefer to fall back upon proto- 
plasms. Scientists tell us that the human 
race is evolved from two protoplasms, one 
created to vote, the other not to, and it is of 
no use trying to get behind protoplasms; 
one Is so apt to find nothing there. 

Thinking the matter over seriously, 
I am inclined to feel that it would be of 
little use trying to reform politics unless 
one first reformed the newspapers of to- 
day. "There," said my friend, "you appeal 
to my prejudices as well as to my princi- 
ples." I was glad of that. I always did pre- 
fer to appeal to a man's prejudices rather 
than to his principles; there are so many 
more of them, and in this matter we agreed 
perfectly that the influence of many mod- 
ern newspapers was pernicious in the ex- 
treme. Possibly they may be no more a real 
woman's province than are politics, but I 
have my opinion of them, all the same, and 
they are one of the trials of my life. One 
cannot refrain from reading them, and the 
46 



AUTRES TEMPS, A UT RES MCEURS 

mental effort of subtracting the possible 
grains of truth from the tissue of journal- 
istic imagination is equalled only by the 
mental gymnastics required to chase the 
article in which one is interested, as it skips 
gleefully from column to column on widely 
separated sheets. The front page of my 
beloved "Herald" is strongly suggestive of 
a London 'bus, and though nothing could 
be more pleasant than such association, the 
one is as confusing in the search for knowl- 
edge as is the other in the quest of one's 
destination. One acquires quite startling in- 
formation at times. I had no idea, until 
I read it this morning, that "the effect the 
suspensions would have on the graduate 
accumulation and resultant congestion of 
goods at Atlantic and Gulf ports would be 
the (continued on page eight) largest sale 
of any high-grade caramels in America." 
This is interesting and, probably, quite 
true, but I have often wondered if this 
rending of continuity in journalism may 
not be responsible for a man's method of 
reading the newspapers. Of course they 

47 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



cannot be read peacefully, page after page, 
as one reads a book, because one has to turn 
and re-turn and play leap-frog generally, in 
order to follow the article from page i to 
page 9 to page 37; but just why a man 
should pick every section to pieces and 
carpet the entire floor with them is one of 
those things that he is unable to explain. 
I never have time to go to church on Sun- 
day, because my entire morning is occupied 
picking newspapers off the floor. 

But this is irrelevant. Both my friend 
and 1 felt that the newspapers were not 
invariably on the side of law and order, and 
that at times they permitted themselves 
a licence that i^ subversive of discipline. 
So far as I can see, discii)line exists nowhere 
in these days except in the army, and if I 
am ever obliged to imperil my soul by vot- 
ing, I will do so cheerfully if my vote will 
ensure conscription. The army is pretty 
nearly the only institution in the country 
in which one may safely place one's faith. 
We have behaved uncommonly well in Bos- 
ton during a recent unpleasantness, but the 

4« 



AUTRES TEMPS, A UT RES MCEURS 

situation might have been deplorable had it 
not instead been rendered distinctly agree- 
able by the presence of that first cousin once 
removed to the army, under whose charge 
we are at present luxuriating. They are not 
only efficient but adorable, and their fame 
is spreading throughout the land. A lady 
from New York was obliged to visit Boston 
when our troubles here first began, and the 
perils of a visit to Boston, as predicted by 
New York, were such that the valiant lady 
made her will and ensured her life before 
she bought her ticket. After a few days in 
this perfectly quiet and well-conducted 
town, she expressed herself as totally un- 
able to understand the law and order that 
reigned throughout the place. "Why!" she 
exclaimed, "if this had happened in New 
York — ! ! ! " But she left the rest of the sen- 
tence to our imagination. I entirely agreed 
with her. I stood one day at a particularly 
congested street corner, watching an ex- 
tremely good-looking young mounted "vet- 
eran" directing the traffic. 

I was so absorbed in admiration that I 

49 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



lost all track of time, and was only awak- 
ened to a realization that I was blocking 
the pavement by a pleasant voice that 
made itself heard beside my shoulder. 
"Please," said a uniformed figure with an 
alarming-looking bayonet over its shoulder; 
"would you be so kind as to move on?" 
I am perfectly certain that a New York 
policeman would not have put it that way ; 
even a London Bobby might have said — 
"Move on there!" 

Of course I do not wish to assert our su- 
periority, nor to draw any derogatory com- 
parisons. I observed broad-mindedly to my 
friend that Boston had troubles of her own, 
and that every city in the Union seemed to 
have gone crazy. He assented to this, and 
in proof of our assertion produced a letter 
which had recently been sent him from 
Washington, and which he read aloud to 
me: 

"... We have had another toilsome, 
troubled week. The great difficulty of ob- 
taining good and willing servants is annoy- 
ing and vexatious. To serve is no part of the 

50 



AUTRES TEMPS, AUTRES MCEURS 

intention of a large portion of the hired 
help or assistants — or only to serve ac- 
cording to their own pleasure and on their 
own terms. The great object is to render 
the least possible service and to obtain the 
highest amount of wages obtainable. . . . 
This, especially the shirking part, is partic- 
ularly the case with the Irish — more so 
than with American or other nationalities 
— and the difficulties are on the increase. 
. . . There has been a class of demagogue 
poHticians who have contributed largely to 
this state of things by which all affairs — 
domestic, political, and other — are dis- 
turbed without benefit to employer or em- 
ployed. The teachings and influence of the 
* New York Tribune ' have been pernicious. 
B and a class of demagogues in Con- 
gress have enacted a most outrageous 
law—" 

But that was as much, and more, than I 
could bear, and at that point I gave way to 
unmitigated pessimism. I doubt if even Mr. 
Morrison Swift views modern life more 
gloomily than I did at that moment. "It is 

51 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



alarming beyond expression," I declared 
lugubriously; "fifty years ago we were an 
honest and respectable people, and to-day 
we have deteriorated until there is neither 
honour nor honesty left in the race. What 
a pitiful contrast!" 

''Perhaps," he replied thoughtfully, with 
a hateful Httle masculine twinkle in the tail 
of his eye; "but the date of that letter is 
June 3, 1869." 



IV 

THE LOST ART OF LETTER- 
WRITING 



IV 

THE LOST ART OF LETTER- 
WRITING 

WITH the never-d}'ing interest felt 
in the subject by the female mind, 
I read a thrilhng scene in a novel the other 
day. in which was depicted a difference of 
opinion betAveen a man and his wife. Wlien 
the climax was reached, the lady, with 
great dignity- and propriety', remarked to 
her husband that he must choose bet^veen 
her and the tertium quid in question; and 
the husband, with time-honoured pro- 
priety', chose his wife. It was all ver\- pleas- 
ant reading, and one closed the book with 
a sense of having been truly uplifted. That 
course of action always seems to work beau- 
tifully in novels, but in real life it some- 
times misses the mark, as I found when I 
tried once to work it on the husband that 
happens to belong to me. 

Some years ago we had, as head gardener, 
or farmer, a man who was so unsatisfactory 

55 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



(to me, at all events) that one summer mat- 
ters came to a head. Apparently the farmer 
considered that it was my personal duty to 
remove the — the — refuse from the back 
piazza to the pig-stye, and he absolutely re- 
fused to black the boots. My dear father 
took this last-mentioned duty upon him- 
self, and an early riser might have had the 
privilege (provided my father did not hear 
him coming) of seeing an extremely aristo- 
cratic old gentleman, arrayed in the briefest 
of shirt-tails, seated on the back stairs with 
a blacking-brush in one hand and a guest's 
boot balanced on the other. An English 
friend once remarked that he thought it the 
most graphic picture of a duke in reduced 
circumstances that he had ever seen. 

Finally, however, the relations between 
the farmer and myself became so strained 
that I could not bear it another minute; so 
with all the time-honoured dignity (that I 
could muster) I told my husband that he 
must choose between the farmer and me. 
He chose — the farmer! That fussed me up 
a good deal because I had no precedent to 

56 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

go by; but I was n't going back on my dig- 
nity, and as the farmer would not leave, 
I had to. A few years later he was dismissed 
(in disgrace), but I am much relieved, even 
at this late date, to make public my action, 
as for several years I have lived before 
the world a misjudged and misunderstood 
woman. You observe, Heft. I have a perfectly 
good family of assorted consanguinity who 
are all quite capable of filling my place in 
the household, so I refused to be a little 
martyr any longer, and arranged that here- 
after my summers should be really enjoy- 
able. Consequently, as I was not at the 
farm, and my husband was toiling between 
there and the town in the hot train and 
making believe he loved it, of course it was 
necessary to arrange for a correspondence 
between us. 

I apologize for the hanalite of the remark, 
but it has been borne in upon me during 
past years that letter-writing is a lost 
art. The observation is more than banal; 
it is an aphorism, and the truth. My hus- 
band is not one bit worse about it than 

57 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



anybody else, but having recently returned 
from a two months' hoHday, I have become 
convinced that there is a brevity and lack 
of detail in the letters of to-day that leave 
much to be desired. On thinking It over, I 
conclude that the lack I find in letters from 
my friends evidences an absence of egotism 
on their part. Now, when anything Inter- 
esting or of Interest happens to me, I am 
Instantly seized with an irresistible desire 
to sit down and write my long-suffering 
friends all about it, with all the pros and 
cons, details and ornamentations. Then, 
after an interminable Interval, during which 
I fly to the door every time the postman 
comes, expecting a ten-page letter of sym- 
path}', I receive, at the end of ten days or 
two weeks, three pages of three words to a 
line, about something else, and either no 
allusion at all to my thrilling news, or pos- 
sibly a three-word postscript tucked Illegi- 
bly Into a corner. As for getting anybody to 
answer a question in a letter, I have given 
that up long ago. If an answer is Impera- 
tive, I write my question on a return, self- 

58 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

addressed postcard, and if I am lucky, or 
my correspondent has even an embryonic 
conscience, I may receive a reply in the 
course of a week or ten days. It does not, 
even then, invariably bring the informa- 
tion requested. A short time ago I wished 
to verify the name of a gentleman in the 
Bible. I knew approximately where to find 
him, but I was comfortably curled up in 
bed, writing, and my Bible was tidily re- 
posing upon my prie-dieu across the room. 
So I picked up one of the above-mentioned 
postcards, of which I keep a supply at hand, 
wrote down my question, sent it to the 
post, and dismissed the matter from my 
mind. At the end of a week or ten days I 
received the torn-off card bearing the terse 
reply: "If such a thing as a Bible can be 
found in Boston, see II Kings, chap. — , 
verse — ." I knew pretty nearly as much as 
that myself, but did not want the trouble 
of looking for it. However, this was the 
same friend who once wrote me that, hav- 
ing a bad cold, she "had retired to bed with 
S. Paul on one side and Bismarck on the 

59 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



other," so I had not expected too much 
from a lady of such tastes. In any case, I 
regard a postcard as Httle short of an in- 
sult, and would prefer to receive even a bill ; 
it tells one more. I am a convert to the pic- 
ture postcard when it is bought by one's 
self for one's self as a reminder of a place, 
but to send them from abroad to one's 
friends at home, with some such remark 
written upon them as "Here yesterday. 
Is n't it lovely? " — fills me with exaspera- 
tion. I usually reply by returning another 
picture postcard of Long Wharf, or some 
equally unfrequented portion of Boston, 
with the enquiry, " Does n't this make you 
homesick?" 

Letter-writing is a real art and should be 
cultivated, both as to writing letters and as 
to enjoying them when received. Naturally 
they should be legible, and about this I am 
myself very particular. One of my dearest 
aunts implores me to use my type-writer 
when I write her, and another dear friend 
tells me that my letters are "perfectly 
charming" (usually underlined), and that 
60 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

she enjoys them immensely, only she can- 
not read a word of them. Possibly this may 
be the reason she enjoys them so much, but 
I keep bravely on, hoping that time and 
study may accustom her to the originality 
of my handwriting, and anxiously accept- 
ing the risk that greater legibility may 
lessen her appreciation. 

My husband is an extremely busy man. 
He hates nothing so much as to write let- 
ters, and his idea of an earthly Paradise is an 
inaccessible island where any approaching 
postman would be shot at sight. It can eas- 
ily be imagined that for him to write his 
letters to me with his own hand instead of 
dictating them, to be written by the type- 
writer, is flattering to me in the extreme, 
and I really do appreciate it. His calligraphy 
is as beautiful as one can expect from a gen- 
tleman who still persists in using a quill pen, 

— it is the only sign of age that he shows, 

— and his letters run somewhat as follows : 
" Dear," " Dearest," or " Dearest Blank," 

(according to the amount of time at his 

disposal — or possibly to the degree, Fah- 

6i 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



renheit, of his affections at the moment). 
"Had a fine day yes'day at farm. Apps. 
com'g on in fine shape. Finshd-wk. on 
celery bed & weeded garden. Hollyhl^s. 
superb. Had int'view c Blank at office, ar- 
rgn^ about plmbg. Tho't he'd make more 
trouble but he agrd. to every thng. A. came 
out of ether beautifully — doing O.K." 

Now that was truly interesting, only I 
wondered what "A." had gone under ether 
for. The last time I had seen him, a few 
days previously, he appeared to be in the 
best of health and spirits. Nothing would 
have induced me to telegraph enquiries as 
to what had happened, because I knew 
quite well that I should be accused of wor- 
rying, but in every letter sent to my family 
during my absence I mentioned that I was 
of an inquisitive disposition, and would love 
to know what had happened. Many friends 
wrote me of how well he was doing, and how 
thankful I must be that It was no worse, 
and in almost every letter I had from the 
family I was told that he was doing finely 
and that I was not to worry. I did n't; but 
62 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

I did not learn what had happened till I got 
home and pinned "A." personally into a 
corner where it was impossible for him to 
get away from me. 

One of my friends is in such a hurry to 
get through the irksome task of writing a 
letter that she leaves out most of her words, 
and as they are usually the important ones, 
I frequently have brain-storms in my ef- 
forts to ascertain what she is writing about. 
I had a letter from her the other day in 
which she wrote: "I clean forgot to offer 
my letter of yesterday — a monstrous 
oversight — but my go to you with my 
best wishes to you and your's. ... I won- 
der Browning and Noyes fall down before 
such poetry." It was a really interesting 
letter. I have known her for more years 
than she will permit me to mention, so I 
can usually read her mind and know what 
she means; I also happened to remember 
that I had recently celebrated a disagree- 
ably advanced birthday of my own, so 
I was able to supply the felicitations (or 
sympathy) that should have been sent in 

63 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



the letter received the day previously; but 
I waited with pathetic interest to see what 
was coming to me with her good wishes. 
I thought it might be a new motor, or a 
diamond necklace, or even a jar of her sweet 
pickle, which is popular in my family and 
would have been most welcome, but noth- 
ing ever came. The last sentence I am still 
working over as, owing to a certain lack of 
punctuation, I do not elicit her meaning 
with my usual quickness of grasp. I cannot 
think why she is in such a hurry to finish 
her letters because they are so delightful 
in their wit and humour that she ought to 
enjoy writing them; and if she would only 
refrain from licking the envelope flaps till 
they stick from end to end, so that it is im- 
possible to open them, they would be quite 
perfect. 

It is not only my contemporaries who 
scatter these flowers of literature along the 
path of my declining years. I am also priv- 
ileged to include a large number of youthful 
friends among my correspondents, and we 
discuss all sorts of subjects. Not being rel- 

64 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

atives, they are willing to discuss even 
the education of their children with me, 
and one of them once took my advice. 
I am really very respectful in my attitude 
regarding the education of to-day; it is 
so superior to anything we had in my time 
and so superlatively putile. (I invented that 
word myself and being translated, it means 
a mixture of " puerile" and "futile.") I hap- 
pen to be corresponding with one of them 
just now upon education, and I find it most 
edifying. In one letter I asked her how 
much her daughter, aged six, learned at 
kindergarten, and the reply came back in 
one word written in the middle of a large 
sheet of paper: 

NOTHING 

I had been inclined to suspect as much, and 
chuckled. I replied that I thought it rather 
hard that she should have to pay out one or 
two hundred dollars a year for the attain- 
ment of such an immaterial object, and fur- 
ther enquired as to the curriculum of her 
older daughter, aged about ten. 

65 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



"English, History, Latin, Geography, a 
mixture of Arithmetic and Algebra, and 
French." I studied the list thoughtfully. 
"English," I suppose, includes grammar, 
and I could only trust that the "History" 
was not of the American variety prevalent 
in our schools. It seems a bit supereroga- 
tory to devote much time to Geography 
just now, because there is so little of it, but 
I regarded my friend's child with respectful 
awe that at ten years of age she should be 
tackling Algebra. French is most useful, 
and a knowledge of it cannot be too early 
instilled, but, as I pondered over each les- 
son set, I did not seem able to find a single 
one which might possibly conceal spelling 
or writing beneath some more imposing 
title. I have frequently been assured that 
one is born with or without a gift for spell- 
ing, in which case the Spelling Fairy must 
have worn herself out attending the chris- 
tening i:)artics of the older generation, and 
is able to be present at only a limited num- 
ber of such occasions in these days. Either 
this, or something else, must account for 
66 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

the lack of the gift of spelling in some of my 
young friends. I had a letter from one the 
other day which was really quite unique. 
She confided to me that she was " writting " 
in a hurry to tell me that she "thoght" she 
had about "desidcd" to take up "littera- 
ture" as a "proffession." I could only reply 
that I was greatly interested, and that I did 
hope she would be fortunate enough to find 
a really good proof-reader. 

But, dear me, what do such trifles as con- 
tractions, omissions, and misspelling mat- 
ter! The affection is expressed in just as full 
measure, and interest is always to be found. 
If people could only be convinced that 
" battle, murder, and sudden death " do not 
constitute the sole interest of a letter. 
Never shall I forget a letter from my father, 
the very best of old-fashioned correspond- 
ents, written to me when I had been living 
abroad for some years. There was little of 
excitement in the ordinary sense of the 
word. He mentioned just in which room and 
upon what chair my mother was sitting 
and what she was doing. He made a few 
67 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



pungent remarks upon the choreman who 
had broken a large pane of glass (my parent 
was a very real man) ; and he observed that 
he had just glanced out of the w^indow and 
had seen Mr. Blank's cat crawling along the 
communicating steps of the houses oppo- 
site. I never in my life was so interested — 
specially in the cat. I knew just what he 
looked like, and just the holes in the iron 
railing through which he would elect to 
crawl. I read and re-read that letter till it 
was almost w^orn out, and though it was 
written some thirty-seven years ago I have 
never forgotten it — or that cat. 

Few people keep letters in these days, 
and small blame to them; few are worth the 
keeping. Were more of them like those of 
my father's and "Mother Anton's," few 
would be destroyed. 

"What a correspondent she was, to be 
sure! 'Wait for Mother Anton's letters, if 
you want to hear the truth about it,' was 
the common shibboleth in the family. Her 
epistles were comforts to the homesick 
school-boy, the delight of her children in 

68 



THE LOST ART OF LETTER-WRITING 

foreign lands, and became valuable tran- 
scripts of the current histor^^ of the whole 
Auton tribe. For forty years she wrote a 
weekly bulletin to her absent ones, bring- 
ing to their anxious hearts fresh photo- 
graphs of home. 

"Mother Auton would never sit at a 
desk. Neither 'secretary' nor 'davenport' 
suited her purpose. . . . She took her writ- 
ing-materials on her broad, motherly lap, 
pushed her cap-strings from her face, ad- 
justed her gold spectacles over her ample 
nose, dipped her pen daintily in the ink . , . 
and away it ran so merrily over the paper 
that she would be on her fourth page be- 
fore we children, who were seated around 
her, had half gotten through sucking our 
oranges. People write letters now, lots of 
them, heaps of them; but I very much 
doubt whether they contain one half the 
valuable news — the harmless gossip, the 
genial spirit — which flowed so readily 
from Mother Anton's pen. 

"There she sat in her chair every Sunday 
morning for over forty years, writing the 

69 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



weekly epistle, with bended head and be- 
nign expression, while the wood fire hissed 
and sputtered, and the old canary sang in 
the sunlight." 



V 

MY BOLSHEVIST 



V 

MY BOLSHEVIST 

OUITE recently my husband attended 
a large dinner-party where he had the 
pleasure of hearing a speech made by Mr. 
Gompers, and returned to the bosom of his 
family in a frame of mind regarding both 
the manner and the matter of the address, 
that bordered upon enthusiasm. 

My husband has always been a (moder- 
ate) upholder of the labour unions and, 
being a dutiful wife, I have endeavoured to 
be guided by his convictions on such occa- 
sions as I have not felt that he would do bet- 
ter to be guided by mine, so I am bringing 
my mind to bear upon the matter in order 
to decide which of the two above-mentioned 
courses it is best in this case for us to follow. 
It is a difficult matter to determine, both as 
regards my husband and the subject in 
question, because my husband usually de- 
cides first and talks about it afterwards, 
and also because my point of view with re- 

73 



PERSONA L PRE J UD K ILS 



sard to labour, socialism, and Bolshevism 
is entirely that of the amateur. Even in my 
proper sphere of domestic labour, I have 
had but one experience of labour difficul- 
ties, and that episode was caused by out- 
side interference and not from within — as 
is usually the case. T settled it by paying 
other people and doing the work myself till 
the atmosphere cleared, and then eveiy- 
body settled down; but I quite realize that 
such a course is not always practicable, and 
I feel that I must take a wider view of 
existing circumstances. 

This, also, is a bit inconvenient because 
1 am too busy to attend labour meetings, 
and I Ihid it impossible to read the articles 
pro\ided for me by my socialistic friends 
and relatives because they exasperate me to 
such an extent that my calm judgement 
is upset, and they only cause me to yearn 
for a Czar or a Dictator. At any rate, I 
prefer to make my investigations at first 
hand and to judge for myself, which I do by 
holding long and exhaustive conversations 
with the workmen of various trades who 



74 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



haunt my house in one or another capacity. 
This is nothing new on the part of either 
the workmen or myself. We have had 
pretty much the same set of men for the 
past forty years, and we have grown up to- 
gether, so to speak; consequently I dare 
say I do not meet the modern and more 
ambitious men who are reforming the 
world so uncomfortably for themselves and 
us; still, my workmen friends are not yet 
superannuated, and I am both interested 
and edified by what they have to say. 

I cannot, at this moment, remember a 
single one of these men who has expressed 
more than a very qualified approval of the 
present demands of labour, and the major- 
ity are almost as sceptical of its rights as 
I am. To be sure, in spite of the encourag- 
ing orthodoxy of their opinions, they charge 
me just the same for their labour as would 
the maddest socialist, but I am willing to 
admit that I don't see how they can very 
well help it. The only trouble I have is that 
I never seem able to make it clear to them 
that, while I quite understand that I must 

75 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



pay them more because they are obliged to 
pay their men more, nobody pays mc one bit 
more, and that it is I who suffer. I get quite 
a good deal of sympathy, but I do not notice 
any diminution in the amount of the bills. 
It may be a femininely broad statement, 
but it is quite true that I have yet to meet 
a working-man who is an advanced social- 
ist. My personal experiences with such are 
confined to a few near relatives, and one or 
two people like a certain Bolshevist gentle- 
man, with whom I long to make a closer 
acquaintance than he has permitted me. 
I have several really dear friends whom I 
have never seen, and with whom my friend- 
ship is based solely on an interchange of 
letters, but the gentleman of whom I speak 
gives me no opportunity for reciprocity, as 
when he wrote me his long and interesting 
letter, he carelessly neglected to give either 
his name or address. I feel quite badly 
about it because I am sure he misunder- 
stands me, and he distinctly damped my 
ardour of patriotism, the expression of 
which brought me under the ban of his only 
76 



AiY BOLSHEVIST 



too evident displeasure. I take for granted 
that he is not a member of the Y.D., as in 
that case I am sure he would have been 
more sympathetic with my humble desire 
to please. 

The occasion of his criticism arose at the 
time of the return from abroad of our New 
England Division of troops, and the day 
selected for the triumphal parade was as 
cold and disagreeable as Boston could pro- 
duce. Part of the procession formed in 
front of my house, and as I watched them 
from my library window I bethought my- 
self of the populace sitting on the five miles 
of grandstand that had been built from 
which to view the four miles of parade. 
They did not worry me any because I re- 
garded anybody who elected of their own 
free will to sit there for five mortal hours in 
such weather to be deserving of all that was 
coming to them. My maternal heart, how- 
ever, did 3'earn over those returned boys, 
whose C.O.s may have been admirable offi- 
cers in war, but did not know enough to put 
overcoats on their men in peace. I watched 

77 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



till I could not bear it another minute, and 
then sent out to collect a dozen or so and 
bring them in to get warm by the big open 
fire. I make no remarks about them. When 
a woman gets a Colonel and a Major, a 
couple of Captains, half a dozen Lieuten- 
ants and six-foot two of an adorable Chap- 
lain making themselves agreeable, it is no 
time for words, but action. I again sent 
forth my emissary to procure a few of the 
best-looking Y.M.C.A. girls waiting about 
to feed the men, and with these on the spot 
the situation was rendered entirely satis- 
factory. Flushed with my success, my heart 
opened still wider, and seeing those poor, 
shivering privates trying to eat the some- 
what unsympathetic luncheon provided 
for them, I threw wide my front door and 
invited the entire battalion to make my 
house their home. My heart, however, be- 
ing considerably bigger than my house, 
only some twenty-five or thirty of them 
were able to squeeze within the doors, and 
though the accommodation was not luxuri- 
ous, the men were at least sheltered from 

78 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



the bitter cold and piercing wind. I was 
really a proud woman that day, with my 
house filled upstairs and down with the 
American Expeditionary Force. Not only 
were they all such clean, trim, fine-looking 
men but their manners and ways were 
above reproach. 

When they had thanked me civilly and 
gone back to their ranks, I looked around 
my hall and thought I must have dreamed 
it all. We have a good many young people 
in our house at one time and another, and 
after a similar gathering among my own 
circle of friends, my first act after their 
departure is usually to summon all the 
maids and a char-woman or two and clean 
up. I gazed about me with bewildered eyes 
and fled to my writing-desk, where I burst 
uncontrollably into next morning's "Her- 
ald" with the following outbreak of patri- 
otic appreciation. 

*^To the Editor of the Herald. 

" I must confess to having been a trifle 
satiated with the laudations of our troops 

79 



PERSONA L PRE J UDI CES 



rclurniiii; ironi overseas. They seem to iiie 
to have been rather overdone and exa.uger- 
ated, l)ii( since the parade last I'^-iday I 
shonld like to e.\i)ress my praise and ap- 
proval of the trainini; and discipline of the 
U.S. Army in a matter which 1 consider as 
being of i)rimary importance and really 
deserving of praise. 

' 'The day of the parade was nnkinclly cold, 
and il wonld have been blatantly inhospi- 
table nol (() have brought some of the shiv- 
ering nuMi into oni^'s house to get warm, 
(incidentally, had I been the CO., I should 
have ortlerecl overcoats to be worn.) 
J batches of blue-nosed oflicers warmed 
themselves a I our library fire and (to my 
unaccustomed eyes) a whole battalion of 
enlisted men ate their lunch, drank their 
colTee, and smoked their cigarettes in our 
front hall. Now, observe. After all those 
uuMi had ci\ ill\' ihanketl us and gone, not 
one burnt match, nor cigarette stub, nor 
crumb of food was found, anil every little 
iMupty lunch-box was neatly piled, one 
upon tlie other, at the side of the hall lu'c- 

80 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



place! May I ciKiiiirc if the U.S. military 
authorities could be persuaded to receive 
young civilians for training in domestic 
principles? " To which I appended my sig- 
nature and address. 

My enthusiasm for the A.E.F., who had 
so appreciatively accepted the best I had to 
offer, shed a glow of warmth throughout my 
patriotism, and I had that rare but pleas- 
ant and self-satisfied feeling that steals 
over one when, having given of one's best, 
it has been appreciatively received. I had 
no doubt but that Jews, Turks, infidels, 
and heretics had pervaded my house on 
that day, but I swelled with pride to think 
of the civilizing and ennobling effect that a 
residence in the U.S.A. had worked upon 
them, and I began to think that perhai)s, 
after all, this great and free country really 
was the true Democracy that it believes 
itself to be. A few days later I did not feel 
quite so sure about it. I received through the 
mail awritten communication, upon a corner 
of which, cut out from the "Herald," was 
pasted my printed letter. It ran as follows: 
8i 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



** Dear Sir 

"Your letter is an exact showing up of the 
rich American idea of the great american 
democracy. You invite the officers into 
your library but the privates who are pre- 
sumable workingmen in private life must 
stay in the hall Why not have them all in 
the hall or all in the library. Do men of 
your does [sic] think that even in Heaven 
and Hell the officers and privates, the 
workers and other classes of society will be 
kept apart by God. These are the things 
that a foreigner cannot understand about 
your boasted democracy and free country. 
You shreik and brag that you are the most 
democratic country in the world and the 
freest, and tell me where even in Russians 
palmy days can you find so much police 
brutality as your third degree and your 
clubbing and shooting in Lawrence and 
other strikes. Your judicial decissions, one 
man fined for stealing thousands and an- 
other gets ID years for assault or stealing 
a dollar or two. Mooney in jail and rich 
scroundles walking walking the streets. 
82 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



Your Senate fighting and trying to be- 
smirch the name of Mr. Wilson the best 
President that ever lived. Working men 
being sent to jail for breaking petty city by 
laws and rich women suffragettes God bless 
them and more power to them, who know 
the law and defie the judge have their casis 
dismissed, which shows that the judge 
knows the law is illegal and has only been 
made to give the crooked pols lawyers and 
judges a hold over the people. 

"Yours very respectfully 
"A foreign born worker and Citizen" 

It did not discourage me, exactly, but it 
dimmed the radiance of my patriotism a 
bit. That he mistook my letter for that of a 
man is, naturally, highly gratifying, but I 
do so much regret that I cannot write and 
ask him to call on me, for there is so much 
that I should like to talk to him about. 

I want dreadfully to explain to him that 
the size of my library being only some 
twenty square feet, it was truly less aristo- 
cratic snobbishness on my part than lack 

83 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



of dimension that interfered with my demo- 
cratic spirit. I have not the sHghtest doubt 
but that the officers would cheerfully have 
changed places with the privates if it 
would have made them any happier, and 
also the hall would have been more com- 
fortable because it is so much bigger, and 
there was more to sit on, barring the floor, 
than there was upstairs; but after anxious 
consultation since then with an army offi- 
cer, I am assured that the military man- 
oeuvres necessary to have effected the 
change In the space at command, would 
have resulted in a total loss of all troops 
engaged, so my conscience Is clear. As to 
my friend's genial sociability in desiring 
that we should all be together, I am still 
uncertain as to whether his education in 
army etiquette is incomplete, or whether 
he Is a military twin of our Secretary of 
the Navy. 

The oftener I read his letter, the more I 
regret his self-forgetfulness in omitting his 
name and address, because there are so 
many points that I feel we hold in common 

84 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



in spite of a few perfectly natural mistakes 
on his part. My portrait, which he presents 
to the public as that of a "rich American," 
is not nearly so exact as I could wish, but 
the mistake is not so much his fault as it is 
my misfortune. In no way can one be more 
tragically misunderstood, by the world in 
general and one's friends in particular, than 
by living on Beacon Street. The misfortune 
of a residence on Commonwealth Avenue 
does not compare with it — for which, be- 
ing jealous for the reputation of the older 
street, I am content to suffer. I have sup- 
ported this injustice so long that I have 
almost become inured to the hardship and 
pay the penalty without a murmur. Had 
my gentleman friend been of a less retiring 
disposition, I could have explained all this 
to him, with apologies. But let this pass. 
I agree with him entirely that the privates 
in the army are working-men in private 
life. They are, but it seems superfluous to 
make such a point of it ; so are the officers, 
so is my husband, whose hospitality offi- 
cers and men alike so courteously accepted. 

85 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



I work myself, so far as that goes, and he 
hurts my feelings when he makes these 
invidious distinctions; and the trouble is 
that he does n't care whether he hurts 
them or not. I am a lot more anxious to 
spare his feelings than he is to spare mine, 
wherein I boldly state that I am the better 
democrat of the two. 

He evidently agrees with me that differ- 
ent classes do exist, because he insists upon 
putting me off in a corner with other men 
of "your does," and firing theological 
questions at my head. Here, I deeply regret 
to say, I cannot help him. I am no theolo- 
gian, but I have a strong feeling that any 
attempt to settle the social arrangements 
in the next world is but a work of super- 
erogation. Personally, my hands are more 
than full enough in my frantic endeavours 
to accommodate myself to the existing 
conditions of the immediate present. I 
should like to impress my views upon him 
and beg him not to worry so much over the 
religio-social outlook for the future in 
either of the two places he mentions, but 
86 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



to devote his mental energies to the accom- 
plishment of a little missionary work in 
Boston, Massachusetts, in the present. 

Had he thus occupied himself previously 
to writing me, he might not have held such 
unfortunate opinions with regard to the 
police, in the which he has my deep sym- 
pathy, for I have suffered a good deal from 
that organization myself. I have not yet 
been subjected to the "third degree," nor 
did I join any of my erstwhile friends who 
journeyed joyously to Lawrence in their 
yearning to benefit mankind, but I will 
admit that I have experienced a "brutal- 
ity" of language that has aroused within 
my breast a spirit of revolt unequalled 
by the defiance of the maddest Bolshevik. 
However, I draw a long breath of relief as 
I remember that these experiences are a 
matter of the past. My friend wrote before 
the Coming of the State Guard, whose 
example has been such that I have not 
been insulted by a policeman since the new 
force went on duty. I had long since be- 
come inured to the fact that rudeness and 

87 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



incivility, on the part of Government em- 
ployees of the United States, was a badge 
of office and a declaration of perfect equal- 
ity. I had ceased to feel it a personal insult 
to be called to the telephone by a depart- 
ment of the Municipality, and greeted with 
the remark, "Say, you get them ash barrels 
out earlier or I can't empty *em"; or to be 
told by the policeman at a street-crossing 
that I am old enough to know better than 
to try to cross in front of an electric car. 
I am convinced that both the Government 
and the policeman had my true welfare at 
heart, only they did not know how to ex- 
press it, servility and civility being inex- 
tricably mixed in their minds. But the 
recent glorious change in the personnel of 
the police force gives me reasonable en- 
couragement to hope that the improvement 
in one body may spread in other directions. 
My friend unquestionably was not search- 
ing for points of harmony between himself 
and "men" of my class, and I am afraid it 
would be a bitter disappointment to him 
if he could know how wholly I am at one 
88 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



with him in his criticism that my people 
"shreik and brag" of being the " most dem- 
ocratic country in the world and the fre- 
est." In this matter he shows a perspicuity 
and clearness of judgement that do him 
credit. There is only one truly democratic 
country in this world, and it is not the 
United States of America, but one would 
hardly expect a foreigner to have seized 
the point with such precision, or to have 
described it so graphically in a few brief 
words. Here, however, is the really crown- 
ing point of my desire to meet him face to 
face, for I long to comfort him by the as- 
surance that he has the remedy for his dis- 
satisfaction entirely in his own hands, a fact 
which he has obviously overlooked. Noth- 
ing pains me more deeply than any attempt 
to detain an unwilling guest, and if he is 
not happy in this bragging and shrieking 
country, not one clause in the Constitution, 
nor a single law of the land compels him to 
stay here. In that one particular, at all 
events, we bravely live up to our brag of 
being the freest country in the world, and 
89 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



he is perfectly at liberty to seek another 
and more modest home. He would not be 
called upon even to pay his own travelling 
expenses, for we are a generous nation, and 
are willing to be put to some expense in 
order to be as free as we brag of being. 

Yes; I regret deeply that I can never 
meet my Bolshevist friend. I am sure we 
would have had something in common and 
more of mutual understanding had we been 
able to talk of these things face to face, as 
Mr. Gompers has assured us is the proper 
course to pursue. His whole letter was of 
very real interest to me, and at no point 
more so than in its ending. Having eased 
his soul by expression of opinion, my friend 
forgot himself, and unconsciously reverted 
to a law of nature that is stronger than any 
acquired democracy or Bolshevist ambi- 
tions; one which in the long run will win 
out, though neither my friend nor I will 
live to see it. He signs himself — "Yours 
very respectfully." 

Human nature will out in spite of all 
exertions to the contrary, and beneath all 

90 



MY BOLSHEVIST 



its visions of Equality and Democracy, 
normal, healthy, human nature demands a 
form of government that is monarchical in 
its essentials. In this, you see, my friend 
thinks he differs from me. He is artificially 
convinced that army officers and privates, 
he and I, are all of a glorious equality, but 
when he has got himself and his opinions 
off his mind, he inadvertently acknowl- 
edges that he is bound to hold me in re- 
spect; and the crux of the whole socialistic 
theory lies in the answer to the question 
as to whether his involuntary respect is 
elicited because I live on Beacon Street, or 
because I have tried to share what I have 
at my command with my fellow-beings. It 
is bound to be the one or the other, and the 
conviction makes just all the difference in 
the world. Unconsciously he admits de- 
grees of "class," and if I could only get at 
the real, honest, human side of him, I be- 
lieve that he would admit it consciously. 

It has been said that "a genuine aris- 
tocracy of brains and breeding are vital to 
national health," to which I add that of 

91 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



birth and heart as well, and in defence 
of which creed I have set up my standard. 
I foresee a long and temporarily adverse 
battle, but I go down to my unwept grave 
with my flags flying. 



VI 

OLD FRIENDS 



VI 

OLD FRIENDS 

ON leaving the house after lunch the 
other day, my favourite nephew re- 
marked casually, "Oh, Auntie, will you 
please find Bernard Shaw's 'Arms and the 
Man ' for me ; I want it to read this eve- 
ning." He is the joy of my life, and the stay 
and support of my declining years, and all 
that sort of thing, and of course it is a 
privilege and a pleasure to do anything for 
him, but I sat heavily down upon the low- 
est stair with despair in my heart at the 
thought of hunting out that small volume 
from a room full of books. I had every in- 
tention of making personal remarks to him 
upon the desirability of doing for one's self, 
but he saw them coming and hastily shut 
the door behind him. 

I do not know exactly how many books 
we have in our library; when I turned-to 
with the other char-woman this autumn 
and helped to clean them, I estimated the 

95 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



number at about seven hundred and fifty 
thousand, and out of that collection, the 
"joy of my life" expected me to put my 
hand upon that very small and unobtru- 
sive volume. Really, I did not know where 
to begin the search. However, when the 
"stay and support" expects me to do a 
thing, I usually find it cheaper in the end 
to do it. Last year he did not approve of 
a hat I wore, and told me that he "ex- 
pected" me to get a new one. The next 
time I appeared in the old one, he gently 
but firmly removed it from my head and 
placed it carefully in the very middle of 
the brightly glowing fire. This is quite ir- 
relevant, but I mention it in order to show 
that it was really necessary for me to find 
that book, and to excuse myself for the 
following burst of literary appreciation 
which will probably interest no one but 
myself. 

That search took me the whole of one 

morning and most of the afternoon, but 1 

must confess that I lingered by the way. 

As I passed patiently from one shelf to an- 

96 



OLD FRIENDS 



other, so many old friends called to me for 
recognition that I could not resist stopping 
for a chat with them, and I enjoyed myself 
immensely. Their serene indifference to the 
neglect of modern readers was positively 
refreshing, and they and I agreed that they 
need fear no rivals because so few of them 
exist. Real, true people do not live between 
the covers of a book any more ; for the most 
part, they are only characters in fiction, 
and I could no more make a friend of a 
modern "character" than I could make 
love to a figure in a movie. I know because 
I have tried, and with regrettably few ex- 
ceptions have lamentably failed. 

After much deep consideration of the 
subject, I have come to the conclusion that 
the cause of my failure is owing to the fact 
that the progenitors of the many pleasant 
acquaintances I make in modern fiction 
will permit me no intimacy in the daily life 
of their offspring. I am allowed to associate 
with them only upon sensational occasions 
or under equivocal circumstances, neither 
of which are conducive to real friendship. 

97 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



I cannot possibly make friends with people 
when I meet them only in a motor smash- 
up, or indulging in conversation of such 
breadth and brilliancy that I should never 
dare converse with them myself. Of course 
I may be unfortunate in my choice of hosts 
or guests, but I seldom hear in real life 
such appallingly clever conversations as 
those I read in books. I regard this as 
providential because otherwise I should be 
obliged to stay at home, but the conver- 
sations of my recent fictional acquaint- 
ances is of so broad and ambitious a scope 
that there is little place for individualities 
to appear. 

Those of us who were privileged to make 
our first voyages across the seas of liter- 
ature in the stately ''three-deckers" of the 
seventies and eighties, find a good deal of 
difficulty in accommodating ourselves to 
the submarine-chasers by which they are 
replaced. I do not wholly disparage them; 
they have merits of their own, but I some- 
times find them conducive to 7nal de ?ner. 
The voyage is accompanied by fewer dis- 
98 



OLD FRIENDS 



comforts, perhaps; we travel more rapidly 
and are in no danger of getting into "the 
doldrums" (occasionally we wish that we 
did), and we certainly get to our destina- 
tion in half the time — a consummation 
vehemently demanded by the modern 
reader, but one misses the old maritime 
and social amenities. You get aboard your 
story and are at once introduced to a tell- 
ing episode in the life of one or more of 
your fellow passengers, after which you 
skip breathlessly from one high light to 
another in their careers till you leave them 
at the end of the voyage feeling much more 
as if their author had taken you to a movie 
than introduced you to any real people. 
Personalty, I am frequently quite satisfied 
to let my acquaintanceship end right there. 
They are not the kind of people with whom 
I crave friendship, but I do regret the old- 
time story in which we lived the life of the 
characters, and learned to know and care 
for them as friends. 

An3body who w^as fortunate enough to 
begin his literary excursions under the 

99 



PEKSONA L PRKJ UDi CES 



kindly auspices of Jacob Abbot, acquired 
a taste for detail that can never be wholly 
eradicated. We did not just read about 
Phonny and Malleville, we played with 
them; we knew what they had for sui)per 
and what time they went to bed. We loved 
dear, j2:entle Mary Bell, and I am perfectly 
convinced that whatever I may possess of 
moral worth is owing far more to the ex- 
ample of the unparagoned Beechnut than 
to any i)arental instruction I ever im- 
l)aliently received. 

With Rollo, I must admit that 1 was 
never quite so intimate, but that was be- 
cause his parents and his Uncle George 
were always so much in evidence and never 
let him alone. Of course he crossed the 
Atlantic alone with that indeterminate 
little sister Jenny, but they made so many 
instructive friends aboard that they might 
just as well have been confided to their care 
in the beginning, and they never had a real 
adventure all the way over. I always dis- 
trusted Uncle George after his carelessness 
in missing that boat, and 1 am perfectly 

100 



OLD FRIENDS 



sure that he took the money which he told 
Rollo he had "credited to his account" antl 
had a good time with it hiniseU* in Paris. 
]\Talleville rather hked Rollo, I think, be- 
cause he wore such beautiful clothes, but 
IMionny and I could not bear him because 
he never i^ot into scrapes and we always 
di(k Besides, Jonas did not like Beechnut. 
Rollo thought cver^^thing that Jonas did 
was perfect, while Phonny and I knew 
quite well that he was not "half as smart" 
as Beechnut, so, naturally, the relations 
between Rollo and us were strained. Did 
you ever know that Beeclnmt was just 
thirteen years of age? Until I grew up and 
asked him, I never doubted but that he 
was forty. He really was an extraordinarily 
clever youth. How desperately I en\'ied 
that rocking-horse he made for Phonny, 
and I have not yet recovered from my awe 
at his erudition in naming it "Polypod." 
It bumped you a good deal when you rode 
on it, but I have alwa^'s attributed the ex- 
cellent condition of my liver in later life to 
the exercise afforded by Polypod's gait. 

lOI 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



I think Aunt Henry must have believed 
much more in the freedom of the individual 
than did Mrs. Holiday, for she gave Phonny 
and Malleville a good deal of liberty, and 
she never fussed, even over Malleville, but 
she was really very much worried upon that 
occasion when her husband insisted upon 
taking her away with him, and she was 
obliged to leave the children in the care 
of the domestics, "particularly Hepzibah." 
You see, Malleville was a very feeble child 
with respect to health, and subject to seri- 
ous fits of illness, and I am sure that Aunt 
Henry would never have consented to go 
had she not been sure that Beechnut would 
oversee affairs in her absence. When I con- 
trast Uncle George's carelessness about 
that boat with the intelligence with which 
Beechnut met his responsibilities, I feel 
that she was entirely justified in her con- 
fidence. Neither Uncle George nor Jonas 
would have known half as well as Beechnut 
what to do the night Malleville had croup; 
in fact I could not have handled the situ- 
ation better myself. It was so sensible of 

102 



OLD FRIENDS 



him to send directly for Mary Bell instead 
of calling upon Hepzibah, who was not 
only very busy, but frankly admitted that 
she knew nothing about illness, while Mary 
Bell (aged twelve) was an expert in nursing. 
She immediately soaked Malleville's feet 
in hot mustard and water which was ex- 
actly the right thing to do. Dear Mary Bell, 
I named an old sheep after her once, and 
no name could have been more appropriate. 
I loved Phonny and Malleville dearly, and 
I wonder if Phonny still throws back his 
head and "laughs long and merrily." 

Of course I did not meet Phonny and 
Malleville on this occasion in the library. 
They live in the nursery where they prop- 
erly belong, and the first person who greeted 
me as I began my search was that incom- 
parable writer Charlotte M. Yonge and 
her prolific literary families. She made her 
reputation, I believe, on "The Heir of Red- 
clyffe." It was the most voluptuously sad 
book I ever read; one fairly wallowed in 
pathos from beginning to end, but how we 
did enjoy it. I always loved Jo of "Little 

103 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



Women," but never so dearly as when I 
found her up in the garret one day, eating 
apples and cr>'ing over the sorrows of Guy 
and Amy. Philip was the most hateful prig 
that ever lived betw^een the pages of a 
book. He was always putting Guy in the 
wrong and taking advantage of it, while 
Guy suffered all sorts of unjust afflictions 
with a truly edifying resignation. Then 
Philip fell ill of a contagious fever through 
w^hich Guy altruistically insisted upon 
nursing him and, of course, Guy died and 
Philip got well, only, to my vindictive sat- 
isfaction, to be dogged through life by a 
gnawing remorse. He deserved it. We may 
laugh at it all now, but after all, I reflect 
thoughtfully, it w^as acknowledged to be a 
very true picture of that period and I recall 
no similar mental portrait of to-day. By 
the time I had reached this particular shelf, 
I had a suspicion that I was wasting time, 
but at that moment I incautiously opened 
"The Clever Woman of the Family" at 
the scene where Rachel expresses her 
views to Ermine on the subject of "cura- 
104 



OLD FRIENDS 



tolatry," and I deliberately sat down cross- 
legged on the floor till I had read it through. 
Rachel may have been only a character in 
a story book written sixty years ago, but I 
defy any one to deny that they number her 
among their family or friends to-day. 
"The Dove in the Eagle's Nest" and 
"The Chaplet of Pearls" are charming 
stories that retain their power to please 
even many modern readers, but our really 
intimate and never-dying friendships w^ere 
with the families of May and Underwood. 
There was never anybody to compare with 
them — in quality or quantity. The May 
family consisted of a father and mother 
and eleven children, and the Reverend Mr. 
and Mrs. Underwood were blessed wdth six 
daughters and seven sons. Every single 
one of those tw^enty-eight people was so 
clearly drawn and definite, so wholly alive 
and real, that throughout the course of 
their lives, which, in the various books, 
covered a period of at least fifty years, 
they were absolutely distinct in character 
and development. We lived the daily life 

105 



r/'lKSONA L J'RI'JUniCl'S 



of those IVii'iids of ours; wc l)n-;ikr;is(r{l, 
llinclncl, (liiu'd, ;iii(l had Irii o'clock I'.M. 
lea \vilh (hem. Wc rejoiced in their joys 
and sorrowed in th(Mr i;riefs, and if I could 
(>ver lind a jjhysician of Dr. May's charms 
and (lualilications, I should welcome any 
illness thai brou.^ht ine under his care; hut. 
they don't grow any more. Nowadays I 
secnn to stand midway between the two 
epochs; on the one hand rei::arding the 
licence of the olTspring of my generation 
with hair-raising horror, yet acknowledg- 
ing that it really was a little hard on 
]\1argaret May that maidcMilinc^ss forbade 
her to go to walk with a >()ung man, even 
though escorted by an elderly governess 
and a large assortment of small brothers 
and sisters. Her modesty was entirely un- 
availing, too, for she later became engaged 
to him and they both dic>d - of course. 

The Underwoods had a nuich harder life 
than tlie Mays, for they were left orphaned 
and jKwerty-stricken when the oldc^st of 
tluMU A\as only sixteiMi, but surel>' there 
ne\iM' \\as so capable and melhodical a 
I of) 



OLD /'Rf/'INDS 



j)crson as Wilniet. She Ijrought uj) ihat 
family of brothers and sisters with a capa- 
l)ih"ty and success that to this day fills mc 
with awe and envious admiration. I know 
the bears will come out and eat me up as 
they did Elisha's other disrespectful young 
friends, but I cannot help a certain mild 
feeling of vindictive satisfaction in the 
knowledge that Wilmet's own two boys 
turned out rather badly. They were once 
found to l)e slightly under the influence of 
lif|uor, and it upset the entire family con- 
nexion for a fortnight. It is the fashion to 
laugh at Miss Yonge, but let the admirers 
of modern ficlion say what they will, her 
character-drawing has never been sur- 
passed. She Ijegan with her characters 
when they were born, and those who did 
not die by tin; way, she carried on long 
f)ast middle life, each one developing un- 
mistakably along his or her own lines. Even 
in their children, one found the character- 
istics of their parents. Such clearness as 
this shows talent of no mean order, and she 
is an author nuich neglected even by th(jse 

107 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



who are old enough to take pleasure in 
something better than murders and im- 
moralities. 

Reluctantly I bade Charlotte Mary good- 
bye and prepared conscientiously to con- 
tinue my search for Bernard Shaw, but just 
then a person quite different from them 
both obtruded himself upon my notice; 
Geoffrey Hamlyn came breezily across the 
downs to greet me, and my good intentions 
went to join my large collections of them 
in the place where good intentions belong. 

Henry Kingsley is an author who has 
suffered much from the (in my opinion) 
far less deserved literary fame of his brother 
Charles, who (again in my opinion) was a 
prig. From the very scant amount of ma- 
terial that exists, I gather that Henry may 
not have conformed with entire particular- 
ity to the somewhat severe and narrow 
standards of his family, and shortly after 
leaving Oxford, minus a degree, he either 
betook himself, or, as I shrewdly suspect, 
was incontinently shipped off to Australia. 
Here he found material for "one of the 

io8 



OLD FRIENDS 



finest pieces of fiction ever composed." Yet 
in the biography of his brother Charles, 
a ponderous tome of a thousand or more 
pages, "containing abundant letters and 
no indiscretions," neither Henry's name 
nor his books are once mentioned. (In the 
rough copy of this chapter I had here de- 
voted a long paragraph to the expression 
of my opinion of Mr. Charles Kingsley's 
attitude toward his brother Henry, but 
when I sat down to typewrite the manu- 
script I reflected thoughtfully upon the 
feelings of my publishers. They frequently 
show a highly commendable sensitiveness 
regarding the feelings of other people, 
even when they are dead, and so I decided 
to "blue-pencil" the paragraph myself, be- 
fore they ordered me to do so. However, I 
feel much better since I wrote it all out, 
and I can still read it in private to my 
friends.) Many people tell me how they 
loved "Amy as Leigh," but would they sit 
down to read about him now? Would any- 
body wade through "Alton Locke" unless 
in search of a defunct sociahsm? Go to! 



109 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



Sam Buckley and Charles Ravenshoe will 
be true and living friends long after Charles 
Kingsley's books are out of print and for- 
gotten. 

Never was there so gallant a gentleman 
as Sam Buckley. I would have married him 
myself in a minute had he only given me 
the chance, but he fell a victim to the su- 
perior charms of Alice Brentwood, whose 
acquaintance he made under such enchant- 
ing circumstances that it was impossible 
to resist the temptation of re-living that 
wonderful half-hour with him. 

"Sam went to the club with his im- 
mortal namesake, bullied Bennett Lang- 
don, argued with Beauclerk, put down 
Goldsmith, and extinguished Boswell. But 
il was too hot to read; so he let the book 
fall on his lap and lay a-dreaming. 

"What a delicious verandah this is to 
dream in! Through the tangled passion 
flowers, jessamines, and magnolias what a 
soft gleam of bright, hazy distance, over 
the i)lains and far away! The deep river 
glen cleaves the tableland, which, here and 
no 



OLD FRIENDS 



there, swells into breezy downs. Beyond, 
miles away to the north, is a threat forest 
barrier, above whieh there is a blaze of late 
snow, sending strange light aloft into the 
burning haze. All this is seen through an 
areh in the dark mass of verdure whieh 
elothes the trellis- work, only broken 
through in this one place, as though to 
make a frame for the [)icture. He leans 
back and gives himself up to watching 
trifles. 

"See here. A magpie comes furtively out 
of the house with a key in his mouth, and 
seeing Sam, stops to consider if he is likely 
to betray him. On the whole he thinks not; 
so he hides the key in a crevice and whistles 
a tune. 

"Now enters a cockatoo, waddling along 
comfortably and talking to himself. lie 
tries to enter into conversation with the 
magpie, who, however, cuts him dead, and 
walks off to look at the prospect. 

"Flop! P^'lop! A great foolish-looking 
kangaroo comes through the house and 
peers round him. The cockatoo addresses 
III 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



a few remarks to him, vvliich lie takes no 
notice of, but j^oes hliuKk'ring out into the 
j;ar(len, right over the contcmi)kitive mag- 
l)ie, who gives him two or three indignant 
pecks on liis chmisy feet, and sends him 
Hying ck)wn the gravel walk. 

"Two bright-eyed little kangaroo-rats 
come out of their box peering and blinking. 
The cockatoo fmds an audience in them, 
for they sit listc ning to him, now and then 
catching a (lea, or rubbing the backs of 
their heads with their fore-paws. But a 
])uck 'possum, who stealthily descends by 
a pillar from unknown realms of mischief 
on the top of the house, evidently dis- 
credits cockey's stories, and departs down 
the garden to see if he can find something 
to eat. 

"An okl cat comes up the garden walk, 
ai( ompanied by a wicked kitten, who am- 
bushes round the corner of the (lowcr-bed, 
and pounces out on her mother, knocking 
lui" down and severely maltreating her. 
r>iil the old lady picks herself uj) without 
a iiiunuur, and comes into the verandah 

112 



OLD FRIENDS 



followed by licr uiinaLural offspring, ready 
for any mischief. The kangaroo-rats retire 
into (heir 1k)x, and the cockatoo, rather 
nervous, lays himself out: to he .agreeable. 

"But the i)Ui)i)y, born under an unlucky 
star, who has been watching all these things 
from behind his mother, thinks at last, 
'Here is some one to j)lay with,' so he 
comes staggering forth and challenges the 
kitten to a lark. 

"She receives him with every symi)tom 
of disgust and abhorrence, but he, regard- 
less of all spitting and tail-swelling, rolls 
her over, spurring and swearing, and makes 
believe he will worry her to death. Ilcr 
scratching and biting tell but little on his 
woolly hide, and he seems to have the best 
of it out and out, till a new ally appears 
unexpectedly, and quite turns the tables. 
The magpie hops up, rang(>s alongside the 
C(;mbatants, and catches the pupj)y such a 
dig over the tail as sends him howling to 
his mother with a flea in his ear. 

"Sam lay sleepily amused by this little 
drama; theji he looked at the bright green 

ii3 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



arch which separated the dark verandah 
from the bright hot garden. The arch was 
darkened, and looking he saw something 
which made his heart move strangely, 
something he has not forgotten yet, and 
never will. 

"Under the arch between the sunlight 
and the shade, bareheaded, dressed in 
white, stood a girl, so amazingly beautiful, 
that Sam wondered for a few moments 
whether he was asleep or awake. ... A girl 
so beautiful that I in all my life never saw 
her superior. They showed me the other 
day, in a carriage in the park, one they said 
was the most beautiful girl in England, a 
descendant of I know not how many noble- 
men. But looking back to the times I am 
speaking of now, I said at once and de- 
cidedly, 'Alice Brentwood twenty years 
ago was more beautiful than she.'" 

Under such circumstances he could 
hardly help falling in love with anybody. I 
very nearly spent the rest of the day with 
Sam, and Major Buckley, and Jim Brent- 
wood, and Dr. Mulhaus, who was n't Dr. 
114 



OLD FRIENDS 



Mulhaus at all, but a most distinguished 
German baron, and almost more fascinat- 
ing than Sam himself. Dear Dr. Mulhaus. 
I am glad he could not possibly have lived 
till 1 9 14, for his great heart had already 
been nearly broken by his country's base- 
ness, and he could not have borne her dis- 
grace. I had to tear myself away from him 
to greet Charles Ravenshoe, happy and 
contented after the tragedies of his life, 
and welcoming me with a smile. 

Really, the people in my library are most 
heterogeneously placed. Who in the world 
should I find living next door to Charles 
Ravenshoe but dear Miss Matty Jenkyns! 
Did she and Charles ever meet, I wonder? 
He would have been so graciously courte- 
ous to the little lady; but I fear not; they 
moved in quite different circles, and Charles 
never went to Cranford. Besides, Miss 
Deborah would have disapproved of him 
so utterly that she would never have per- 
mitted Miss Matty to associate with him. 
Of course, I paid my respects to Miss 
Deborah then and there, but I was careful 

115 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



to confine myself strictly to the "rules and 
regulations for visiting," and only over- 
stepped the limit of time when Miss Matty 
and I stood on the doorstep to watch Miss 
Betsy Barker's cow "going to her pasture 
clad in dark grey flannel." I have recently 
met a real first cousin four times removed 
from Miss Betsy, and she is almost charm- 
ing enough to be first cousin to the cow her- 
self, though there is nothing whatever 
Cranfordian in her character or disposi- 
tion; still, it is a link. Dear little Miss 
Matty. I was always so glad that Peter 
returned to his faithful little sister and 
Cranford with his sense of humour un- 
impaired, but I have frequently felt a bit 
uncertain as to whether Miss Matty's 
sense of humour might not have failed to 
appreciate Peter's wit, and fear she may 
have been inclined to agree with Mrs. 
Jamieson that the shooting of cherubim 
was a bit sacrilegious. 

With a sigh I left these very dear people, 
and then I laughed, for I found I had 
dropped plump into the lap of the Auton 
116 



OLD FRIENDS 



family in "Auton House." I watched the 
recently arrived C. Auton becoming "suffi- 
ciently cohesive to bear pinning"; I sat 
sympathetically on the stairs with T. 
Auton as he curled his cold toes in chilly 
anxiety while his little sister went at his 
bidding to ask his mother if she was quite 
sure that he would "live till morning"; 
I noted their economy of time in saying 
their prayers in the afternoon "in order to 
save time when they went to bed"; and 
I laughed till I cried over the little mother 
who "chewed out her dolly's wash because 
she had been forbidden to play with water." 
These are not characters in a book; they are 
just you and I, and it is an exact account 
of what we ourselves did at one time or 
another in our childhood. 

The Auton family had established them- 
selves with striking incongruity next door 
to Bishop and Mrs. Proudie, and in close 
propinquity to "the Duke's Children." 
Not that they were in the least desirous of 
moving in high society, but because liter- 
ary architecture does not permit one to ar- 

117 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



range books by subjects or authors unless 
one has far more room at one's disposal 
than we have. I did not even let Mrs. 
Proudie know that I was in her vicinity, be- 
cause I knew that she would not hesitate to 
reprove me for wasting my time, so I sur- 
reptitiously sneaked by the Palace, and was 
greatly pleased to be warmly greeted by 
some new acquaintances who are almost 
worthy to take rank among my very real 
friends. 

Mr. Archibald Marshall has the gift, rare 
in these days, of admitting his readers into 
the real intimacy of family life, and it is 
many long years since I have felt so much 
at home with new people as I have with the 
Clinton family. The Squire is one of the 
most pig-headed and delightful, most un- 
reasonable and lovable of people, and so 
unmitigatedly masculine that even in his 
most illogical and inconsistent moods, he 
needs only a little tactful handling to re- 
duce him to the amenability of a lamb. 
When his eldest son married an American, 
his wrath knew no bounds, but her national 

ii8 



OLD FRIENDS 



ability for handling men, and her under- 
standing of the male animal soon converted 
him from an irate father-in-law to an ador- 
ing parent, and since then he has regarded 
Americans leniently, though a bit nerv- 
ously. I think he was pleased, though, 
when I told him that I thought his speech 
to Mr. Armitage Brown, who objected to 
letting his only son go to the War, should 
have been printed in pamphlet form and dis- 
tributed throughout the allied countries. 

Owing to the aforesaid lack of architec- 
tural conformity, I stepped directly from 
my contemporaries back to my very old 
friend "Malcolm," "The Marquis of Los- 
sie." A remote connexion of mine has just 
become engaged to marry the grandson of 
his progenitor, so of course I had to pause 
on my journey and tell him the news. I do 
not say very much about him, because I 
fear he has very few friends left who care to 
hear about him. Besides, time was passing, 
and the "stay and support" would shortly 
be coming home, so I passed hastily on, 
only stopping for a moment to reprove 
119 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



"Alopsa ihc r^aii-y" for being out of her 
l)lace and to send her back to the nursery 
where she belonged, not far from Phonny 
and Malleville. She bore me no grudge for 
my reproof, but pointed out to me the vol- 
ume of IkMMiard Shaw on the shelf below. 
I wasted no time over that gentleman; he's 
no friend of mine. I placed him in a con- 
spicuous i)osition, where even the "joy of 
my life" could not fail to see him, and 
awaited his return with the [Hire conscience 
of one who has accomplished another duty 
in life. 



VII 

NEW ACQUAINTANCES 



VII 

NEW ACQUAINTANCES 

BUT," said the editorial We when the 
foregoing chapter had been sub- 
mitted to It, "you have passed by a num- 
ber of old friends with hardly a word; 
Trollope, for instance." 

"I would n't presume," I replied mod- 
estly; "nobody felt the deaths of Lady 
Glencora and Mrs. Proudie more than I 
did, but their praises have been sung by 
worthier pens than mine." 

"Well, how about modern authors?" 
we urged. "You must have made a few 
new friends." 

Have I ? I wonder. Perhaps; but acquaint- 
ances and real intimacies are two very 
different matters, whether in fact or fiction, 
and one likes to differentiate. Besides, in- 
timacy is a word of wide and uncertain 
scope, and I hesitate to undertake ambigu- 
ous responsibilities. I used to think that 
intimacy necessitated a certain constant 
123 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



familiarity with another's life and habits, 
but my convictions, in this as in many 
other matters, have been shaken of late 
years. Ever since a charming ^oung rela- 
tive urged me to invite her "very dearest 
friend Bobby" to meet her at dinner, and 
was unable to provide me with his surname 
because she had met him only the previous 
day, I have suspected the existence of cer- 
tain intimacies that are unfounded by 
either length of time or exhaustive inter- 
course. Any lingering doubts I may have 
had were dispelled by a friend who dropped 
in to tea the other day. He alluded to a 
lady, calling her by her Christian name, 
which surprised me into saying, "Why, I 
did not know you knew So-and-So." 

" Know her! " he replied; " I have known 
her all our lives; she is one of my most in- 
timate friends." 

"Her death must have been a great sor- 
row to you," I remarked sympathetically. 

"Her what?" he exclaimed. 

"Why, yes; she died three years ago," 
I informed him; "had n't you heard of it?" 
124 



NE W A CQ UA I NT A NCES 



He had n't; but he still maintains that 
she was one of his most intimate friends. 

Now, of course, I do not wish to be un- 
reasonable, and I would not demand of 
fiction more than is required in fact, but 
personally I find it difficult to feel really in- 
timate with a person in fact when I do not 
know whether he is dead or alive, and I can- 
not make real friends in fiction when their 
authors will permit me to associate with 
their offspring only in the telling or public 
incidents of their careers. Acquaintances 
in plenty are to be had for the asking; 
many of them pleasant, most of them in- 
significant, and a regrettable few whom one 
gently cremates upon the glowing coals of 
the nearest open fire. These people may be 
quite charming and attractive, but they 
come and go like guests at the afternoon 
tea which I ought to be attending at this 
moment, and, like them, they make a few 
vaguely pleasant remarks and vanish out of 
my life. I have met their like at dinners and 
balls, on trans-Atlantic steamers, and in 
motor accidents; 1 see them in exciting 

125 



PERSONA L PRFJUniCES 



c\\)cv\cucv^, ;uul lrc(iiUMill\' iiiuln- siu'h 
Itl.uulK iHiiii\()C.il ('iifmnsl.nux^s (hat I 
sIiouKl iHM"l.iiiiI\ ilcrlino a liirtluM- aiuiuaint- 
auiv with tluMU c^\cn luul I llicoppoiluitity 
(() pursue it. I)ul I am ran^K' pjvcu the time. 
Souie of tlu'se people uiij^ht conceivably 
l)eeom(^ liieuds il 1 w ei'e ouly allowiul to 
know llieni wc^ll enoui;h ov long' enoui;h to 
permit the riixMuns; of aeciuaintanee into 
iViendship; hut one cannot become really 
intimate bet\)re one has swallow eil oner's 
soup at a ilImuM-i>aiiy, or swear eternal 
friendship wIumi disiMitani^lini;- an ai)i)arent 
corpse from amid the wreckage ol an aero- 
plani\ and such are the only opportunities 
gi\en us by most of tlu^ modern no\ elists. 
Hope occasionalb' arises within me, as It 
did not long ago when I met that delightful 
gentleman, Mr. John r>alta/.ar. lie really 
took u\c into his cont'idenci^ by ti^Uing me in 
detail the story of his life, and though he 
had bcHMi a good deal of an ass. he admitted 
it so frankl\ anil it)\ ialh that 1 i^)uld not 
but be ilraw II to him. and tluMi, no sooncM* 
hatl 1 begun tt) feel that I knew him reall>' 

120 



NliW ACQUAIN'l 'A NCES 



well, llian \w. was lialcd away to China and 
I shall lU'Vtr sec him ai2:ain. I lis virile brcez- 
incss makes him irresistibk; as a friend, hut 
I am wonclcrinp^ just a little what that 
slightly colourless Marcelle will make of 
him as a husband. I do not know whal Iht 
life with him will be, but I am sure that it 
will not be dull, for she will never kuow 
what he is uoiug fo do next. ] low delightful 
it would have been if he could only have 
visited Major Meredyth (" with ay") at the 
time when Mr. Quan.L( I lo was still his body 
servant; it would have been interesting to 
know what Sergeant Marigold would have 
made of that celestial servitor. I am in- 
clined to think that their conversations 
would have been truly interesting, and I 
am not sure which of them would have 
l)een the more edified. I long for Sergeant 
Marigold as a personal friend, but he will 
not permit me to overstep the line that 
marks our social separation. 1 regret this 
for he and John Haltazar are the only two 
unmitigated men among their author's al- 
ways charming family. Marcus OrdeyiK; is 
127 



PK RSONA L PRE J UDICRS 



an amusing gentleman, but no real man 
could safely have defied conventionality as 
he did; the Fortunate Youth is an enchant- 
ing l)03^ fortunate to a degree most unusual 
in this cold, hard world, but he is the Prince 
in a fairy tale rather than a real work-a-day 
man; Simon is truly something more than 
a Jester, and one could not but have respect 
for anybody who could find humour in 
Murglebcd-on-Sea; but one is not alto- 
gether manly with one foot in the grave, 
and by the time he got well he was so very 
much married that I felt it only decent to 
efface myself; but Sergeant Marigold is not 
only every whit a man, but he is as stern an 
aristocrat as is his next-door neighbour (in 
my library) the Emperor Francis Joseph, 
with whose character he has much in com- 
mon. Not having aspired to association 
with Royalty in fact, I foci free to adopt 
such as please me to friendship within the 
pages of a book, and I am a staunch ad- 
mirer of that monarch who was himself a 
greater tragedy than any he caused. I do 
like men who stick to their convictions 

128 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES 



through thick or thin, right or wrong, and 
the Emperor is no more immovable in his 
principles than is his humble neighbour. 
The Sergeant seldom voices his opinions, 
but 1 always see a gleam of sympathetic ap- 
proval in his eye when, after I have been 
associating with people at Mr. Galsworthy's 
"Country House," or been forcibly intro- 
duced to any of Mr. Oppenheim's tribe, he 
hears me request an audience with the 
Emperor by way of restoring my self- 
respect. I esteem and admire the Emperor 
immensely, but I fear he is quite incapable 
of appreciating the real worth and charm 
of his other neighbour, the dear Cardinal 
of Snuff-Box fame. I always wish that the 
Cardinal could have been api)ointed the 
Emperor's confessor, because I believe that, 
even in so modest a position, his gentle 
sense of humour and his human outlook 
upon life would have mitigated the auster- 
ity of that aloof monarch, and yet not have 
detracted from the most majestic figure in 
history. 

I pass by Mr. DeMorgan and Mr. Hew- 
129 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



lett with a cold bow ; one of them bores me 
and the other has been the cause of bitter 
family strife, so neither is popular with me. 
There is no doubt that Mr. DeMorgan 
gives one ample time and opportunity to 
become intimate with his characters, but 
I cannot feel any very overwhelming inter- 
est in immoral plumbers or inebrious care- 
takers, and though Mr. Hewlett moves in 
quite different circles, his morals are too 
sentimentally questionable for me to feel 
at home with him. I like my good people 
good, and my bad people bad, and never 
feeling quite sure which of the two kinds I 
am meeting in my rare encounters with Mr. 
Hewlett, I skip cautiously by him to greet 
two dear friends about whom I have no 
horrid doubts. 

I am really devoted to Captain (V.C.) 
and Mrs. Desmond, the more so that I did 
not meet them under wildly exciting cir- 
cumstances, nor were they forcibly torn 
from my companionship at the end of six 
months or an unfinished year. I associated 
with them in their daily lives and through 

130 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES 



unhurried though not trivial incident, and 
the more our intimacy grew, the more I 
found in them to admire. I cherish high 
standards and ideals myself, and always 
try to follow the example of those who hold 
them, whether in fact or fiction, but my 
favourite niece says that Honor is alto- 
gether too good to live with, and that she 
much prefers to live with me. This is, of 
course, flattering, but seems to point to 
a lack of success in my endeavours. The 
Desmonds have a delightful habit of ap- 
pearing among their author's other families, 
and always to the pleasure and advantage 
of those about them. They brought those 
two hot-tempered Lenoxes together after 
they had wasted five or six perfectly good 
years over a misunderstanding; they lent 
a hand in helping the unfortunate Lyndsay 
Videlle to face a life, happily not too long, 
with her half-breed husband, and after 
meeting and hearing of them among vari- 
ous of their Anglo- Indian friends, we find, 
as we would expect to find, their daughter 
doing fine work in the War. They are dear 

131 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



people, and I wish there were more like 
them. 

Honor Desmond is a true friend, and I 
often wonder what effect she would have 
upon Mr. Pryce's people if she ever met 
them. She would be extremely sorry for 
them, I am sure, for she would see at once 
that most of them would be perfectly re- 
spectable, self-respecting individuals if only 
their author did not insist upon forcibly 
dragging them from the paths of virtue. 
Ann Forrester was as little inclined to mis- 
behave herself as was the Statue that lived 
in her Wood, and there is not the slightest 
reason to suppose that Jezebel's mother 
would have gone to the lengths she did if 
Mr. Pryce had not deliberately placed her 
there. This is not fair play on his part, and 
I like him the less for it, even though Ann 
is not a very convincing person at best; she 
is not as real as her friend, Claudia, and in- 
finitely less so than either Jezebel or her 
father, who were extremely human. She is 
much more like the characters drawn by 
Mr. Leonard Merrick, who are not real peo- 

132 



NEW ACQ UA I NT A NCES 



pic at all, but exceedingly clever portraits 
to be hung: on the walls of one's imaginar}^ 
house of fiction. 

Why we have not become more intimate 
with the Ga3^-Dombc3S I do not know, un- 
less it is that their discursive author keeps 
them so busy associating with a host of 
half-real, half-fictional people, that they 
have no time to make friends with their 
readers. The only person who has inti- 
mated that she would like me for a friend is 
that superlatively charming woman, Lady 
Feenix; but then, she is not really Lady 
Feenix at all, but my favourite aunt mas- 
querading under that name. She possesses 
the secret of universal popularity which lies 
in making each person she meets believe 
that he is the one person in the world for 
whom she cares and w^hom she wants to sec, 
and though one knows quite well that the 
next comer will fall under the same spell, 
and purr with the same sense of gratifica- 
tion, one is quite content to know that her 
invariable charm will never fail one's self. 

My friends are by no means confined to 

133 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



fashionable London society, and I travel 
down to Devon to greet with warm pleas- 
ure the "Man from America," a delightful 
person in himself, but for whose captivat- 
ing father-in-law I have the tendercst affec- 
tion. Of all the comparatively new friends 
I have made, not one is more to my mind 
than the Vicomte de Nauroy, whose family 
name was Patrick O'Reilly. Nothing short 
of a blend of the two nationalities indicated 
could have produced the polished courtliness 
and the childlike simplicity of this most 
charming of men; no one else under the 
acquisition of unexpected wealth could 
have continued unsuspected to live in the 
modest country cottage, and no one but the 
Vicomte could so gracefully and unob- 
trusively have fallen asleep in one of Lon- 
don's slightly questionable music-halls. His 
two adored granddaughters married and 
left "Bon Papa" alone with his roses and 
old Pelagie (it is a way granddaughters 
have), but the old Vicomte was undaunted 
to the last. He "filled himself a bumper of 
the Madere sec, and drank it, standing alone 

134 



NEW ACQ UA I NT A NCES 



at the tabic. 'A la nicinolre de majcimcsse!' 
said old Patrick — and he reversed the 
glass." 

It is natural to turn from the Vicomte to 
that peppery but grand old nobleman, the 
Prince Saracinesca. He is, perhaps, too old 
a friend to include among these of so much 
more recent a date, but both he and Sant' 
Ilario are so very dear to me that I cannot 
pass them by. I am glad, indeed, that the 
old Prince could not have lived to see the 
evil days that have fallen upon the world, 
but I rejoice in the pride that would have 
been his had he known of the achieve- 
ments of his country's soldiers in the Alps. 
With such as he and the Vicomte, the Clin- 
tons and the Desmonds, I can form real in- 
timacies; various others I accept as pleas- 
ant acquaintances; but for the most part 
I am not loath to withdraw into an exclu- 
sive retirement where the modern fashion- 
able worldlings do not care to follow me — 
nor I to have them. 



VIII 
IIOIJSI'. AND IIOMF, 



VIII 
HOUSE AND HOME 

I APPRECIATE immensely the various 
and varied efforts that are being made 
by my Government to ameHorate the con- 
ditions of Hfe in this country, and in none 
of the many problems connected with this 
desirable end do I feel a greater interest 
than in that of housing. I doubt very much 
if even the Government itself is half as 
much impressed as I am with the impor- 
tance of this problem, or that they would 
go so far as to share my conviction that in 
the proper housing of the population lies 
one of the fundamental principles in the 
production of a worthy citizen. My views 
on the subject are strictly feminine, but, 
therefore, I venture to suggest, not wholly 
unworthy, for to be worth the building of it, 
a house should imply a Home, and "What 
is home without a Mother?" I am afraid 
that if it were left to the tender mercies of 
the gubernatorial mind it would be nothing 
but an incubator. 

139 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



When I am President of the United 
States, I propose to enact an amendment to 
the Constitution which will render obliga- 
tory a working knowledge of their duties on 
the part of heads of departments and chair- 
men of commissions. The present arrange- 
ment seems to be an admirable illustration 
of the modern theory of equality, and of the 
conviction on the part of the general public 
that one man is just as good as another. 
The theory is grand, but, to my reaction- 
ary mind, it does not seem invariably to 
meet with truly practical success. Special- 
izing can, of course, be overdone, but it has 
occurred to me several times that if I 
wanted the best of advice on wine, for in- 
stance, I should not apply to a cotton- 
broker, nor if I broke my leg should I tele- 
phone hastily to the greengrocer to come 
and set it for me. This may sound flippant, 
but indeed one sees actual instances that 
are not a whit the less absurd. I know of 
one municipal commission on building, 
composed of three members, who have 
charge of one of the most important classes 
140 



HOUSE AND HOME 



of building in their city. The decision as to 
architecture, style, planning, and cost rests 
entirely in their hands, and they have mil- 
lions of dollars at their disposal. The several 
vocations of these gentlemen in private life 
are respectively politician, wine-merchant, 
and stock-broker, and, naturally, the poli- 
tician is the chairman. One has nothing 
whatever against these gentlemen or their 
professions in life, but somehow or other it 
does not seem to me the most intelligent 
choice possible for the position they are re- 
quired to fill on that particular commission, 
or that their callings would have tended to 
fit them for it. To a simple-minded person 
like myself it would seem imperative that 
one, at least, of that commission should 
have been an architect by profession, be- 
cause my common sense tells me that only 
a mind trained in that calling could suc- 
cessfully cope with such a problem; but if 
I expressed that opinion publicly, my dem- 
ocratic convictions would be questioned 
and I should be accused of not believing in 
theEquahty of Man. I don't. But that need 
141 



PERSOXA L PRE J L 'DICES 



not prevent the exercise of common sense. 
I believe that one ma>- be a perfectly good 
democrat without falling a victim to that 
delusion, dear to democracies, that any 
citizen is equally fitted for any task, from 
plumbing and architecture to the Presi- 
dency-. It is really rather a discouraging 
view for a nation to assume. A man spends 
years and brains and energy- and money in 
perfecting his knowledge of a certain pro- 
fession or calling, and then the working of 
it is put by imperturbable authorities into 
the hands of somebod>- who knows about it 
just nothing at all. The intentions of these 
commissions are doubtless super-excellent, 
but one has heard where many good inten- 
tions lead, and can only benevolently trust 
that they do not carr>- their perpetrators 
with them; but it would relieve one of a 
good deal o'i an\iet>' for their future welfare 
if both the intentions and their perpetra- 
tors could be educated and trained in a 
more practical path. 

An illustration of this came to my notice 
not lon^ ago in the proposal to enact a law 
1 42 



HOUSE AND HOME 



which would make it obHgatoo^ that all 
bedrooms should be not less than a given 
size, in order that a certain number of cubic 
feet of air should be ensured to those sleep- 
ing in them. Now the intention of that law 
is splendid. I am a great believer in fresh air 
and consider it one of the great factors of 
good health, but this endeavour to secure it 
seems to be open to criticism. In the first 
place, I am wondering just how they pro- 
pose to enforce it. It would be the easiest 
matter in the world to make illegal the 
building of a room containing less than a 
given number of square feet; they might, 
conceivably, also legislate upon the num- 
ber of people who were to sleep in it; but 
when one comes right down to practicali- 
ties, just how do they propose to ascertain 
that the law is not evaded? I may dutifully 
build my bedroom of the prescribed size, 
but how is m>' Government to discover how 
many of my family I may hospitably invite 
to share it with me? Is the police force to 
be augmented, and every policeman fur- 
nished with a latch-key to evciy house? 

143 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



Are they to make stealthy and unexpected 
midnight visitations, and, entering each 
bedroom with flashhght in hand, count the 
occupants of every bed? How unattractive 
a thought ! And if an overplus is found, will 
the unfortunate delinquents be then and 
there dragged from their beds and haled in 
shivering shimmies before the court? It 
might not be within the power of a man of 
\er}' moderate means and large family to 
hire the number of cubic feet of air re- 
quired by the law for each person, and in 
such case what is to be done about it? My 
imagination is unequal to a reply. I can 
only suggest that fresh air is not produced 
by square feet, and meekly enquire, What 's 
the matter with the window? 

This legislating for the provision of fresh 
air by a method that by no means necessa- 
rily produces it, seems to my unintelligence 
much on a par with the precautions taken 
against fire. Here again there appears to 
the puzzled lay mind a lack of consistency 
between the law and its observance, as well 
as something of inequality in its enforce- 

144 



HOUSE AND HOME 



ment. There is an admirable law to the 
effect that no wooden houses or buildings 
may be erected within certain city limits, 
and this ruling is so particularized that a 
man may not build so much as a wooden 
hencoop in his own back 3'ard. It does not 
seem likely, especially in a crowded tene- 
ment district, that he would find hens 
either a safe or a profitable investment, but 
at all events the Government decides that it 
is a case of fowls versus fire, and, very prop- 
erly, rules in favour of safety first. When it 
comes to religious privileges, however, the 
case is different. Many of these tenements 
arc in over-populated Jewish districts, and 
there are certain Jewish feasts which re- 
quire that the w^orshippers shall sleep on 
the housetops. I do not know the season, 
but I trust that it occurs in the summer. 
The houses in this countiy, not being built 
on the plans provided at the time this cere- 
mony was instituted, the Jews are obliged 
to get permits for the temporary erection of 
wooden shacks, which are built on the roofs 
of houses of valuing heights, where they 

145 



PERSONAL PIULJUDICES 



may carry out their religious ceremonies. 
They are thus put to some trouble and ex- 
pense, and I have a sneaking sympathy 
with the loss of memor>^ which causes them 
to forget to pull these structures down until 
the time of the yearly feast recurs, when 
they receive (and doubtless pay for) a fresh 
permit. Meantime throughout the year, 
these wooden shacks, far greater in size and 
danger than any number of hencoops, re- 
main in place; most admirable fuel for 
fires of portentous dimensions. Yet when a 
private school in the same city was built of 
fireproof construction a few years ago, 
which had an open play-garden on the roof, 
permission to build a wooden railing around 
it, in order to safeguard the children from 
falling off, was refused because of the fire 
hazard. Far be it from me to cavil at any 
precautions taken against fire, but there 
seems to me in the above rulings an incon- 
sistency as glorious as that usually attrib- 
uted to the female sex. 

My Government loves dearly to legis- 
late. I suppose I should like to do it myself 
146 



HOUSE AND HOME 



if I had the chance, but their paternal atti- 
tude frequently reminds me of that of cer- 
tain young parents, who lay down strict 
laws of discipline for their offspring, and 
then scatter them — the laws, and fre- 
quently the offspring — to the four winds 
of heaven when they interfere with their 
own personal predilections. The Govern- 
ment is most properly desirous that the 
people should be safely and comfortably 
housed, but when it comes to providing the 
houses, their attitude is distinctly sugges- 
tive of "After you, my clear Alphonse," and 
provocative bows and smirks are directed 
toward the private individual. Now this is 
truly unmoral. An individual seldom can, 
and a corporation never would, tackle any 
large housing proposition as other than a 
strictly business undertaking. It could 
hardly be expected of the one, and it would 
not be justice on the part of the other 
toward its shareholders. Besides, that pa- 
ternal Government of ours permits a jolly 
little game to be played by landowners 
and real-estate dealers which would make 



147 



PERSOXAL PREJUDICES 



sucli an attempt practicalh^ impossible. If 
a man Inns a piece of land and builds a 
niee little house on it, the owner of the ad- 
joining property immediately feels that it 
is a privilege for anybody to look at so 
charming" and attractive a residence, and 
prompth' raises the price of his land; if he 
has a house on it. he raises the rent on 
account of the impro\ement in the \iew. 
1 le ma>' e^•en put up a new house for which 
he can charge a higher rent, and with two 
beautiful new houses to look at. oi course 
the price of a third lot goes up higher, and 
a fourth higher still, so that by the time one 
has a pleasant little group of a dozen or so 
houses, the working-man might just alxnit 
as well contemplate renting a palace on 
Mfth Avenue as being able to alTord to 
hire a simple home in a subtirb. Realh' this 
is a bit discouraging. The little game cannot 
be pUued on the CHnernnieni Inwuise the 
Cun ernment can take the land, if necessar>' 
b\ right of eminent domain, and hold it at 
its own price, so that the working-man 
would be able to secure a decent and proper 
148 



HOUSE AND HOME 



home at a decent aiul proper price. This 
game has been solemnly termed "The Un- 
earned Increment." It is but just to give 
it an imiiosing title because, of a truth, it is 
a most ilkistrious evil, and one which, I re- 
gret to say, is not confmed to the United 
States alone. I was motoring abroad a few 
summers ago, and fate and a tliunderstorm 
compelled us to spend the night in the one 
hotel of a small but busy little town. I never 
met with a more forlorn apology for an inn. 
The doors would not shut; the locks re- 
fused to lock; the papers had peeled from 
the walls in festoons, and one was obliged 
to walk with circumspection lest the rotten 
floors should give w^ay beneath one's feet. 
The landlord was a friendly soul, even if 
depressed, and after the very worst break- 
fast that I ever ate, we fell into conversa- 
tion. He told me that he could not make a 
living out of his hotel, and that he would 
be obliged to give it up. I asked if the little 
town were dead and "nothing doing" to 
bring him business, and he replied that, on 
the contrary, it was quite a centre for 
149 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



''commercial gents," and that if he could 
only give them decent accommodation his 
house would pay well. Being unlearned in 
increments at that time, I enquired why he 
did not borrow the money and make re- 
pairs. He smiled a sickly smile and ex- 
plained. Every freshly papered wall, every 
mended floor and lock, and, it seemed to 
me, every new pin in a fresh pincushion 
promptly produced an added tax for bet- 
terments, and if he improved his grounds it 
would jump his neighbour's taxes as well. 
He simply could not consider the possibility 
of repairs enough to make his livelihood. 
It is a grand game, that, and only a public 
authority pricked and goaded by public 
opinion is ever in this wicked world going 
to put a stop to it. 

It is characteristic of us as a people that 
when an emergency comes we usually rise 
to it and do the decent thing, and this was 
illustrated by the housing responsibilities 
assumed by the Government in various 
parts of the country in war time and for 
war-work, but I sadly fear that we are not 

150 



HOUSE AND HOME 



very far-sighted as a nation. Directly the 
armistice was signed the Government in- 
continently dropped its responsibihties and 
cancelled most of its contracts for such 
work, even in some cases where the build- 
ings were well under way. This is not, ex- 
actly, an argument to use in urging that 
the Government should assume this re- 
sponsibility, but if that body once under- 
took the obligation, one might feel encour- 
aged to hope that it would give its mind to 
the business. In all probability it might at 
least not be guilty of a favourite enterprise 
of some individuals, which is to buy land in 
the suburbs, and then proceed to erect 
thereon cheap and showy tenement houses 
known as "three-deckers," built of wood 
and containing one family on each floor. 
The owner builds them, according to law, 
at precisely the right distance apart to cre- 
ate a superb draught, so that any one of 
them catching on fire they all burn like 
tinder — in which case their owner collects 
a most remunerative insurance. It is only 
fair to note that in many places this form 

151 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



of construction is forbidden, but in many 
others the practice flourishes merrily, not- 
ably in one large Eastern city, where age 
and intellectuality would lead one to look 
for better things. I once thought that the 
French law of fining a person who allowed 
himself to be run over by a passing vehicle 
was most unjust, but a more thoughtful 
consideration shows it to be an admirable 
example of the superiority of positive over 
prohibitive legislation. If the fire regula- 
tions ruled that in event of such tenements 
burning down, not only could the landlord 
collect no insurance, but, on the contrary, 
would be heavily fined, those tenements 
would be of such superlatively fireproof 
construction that you could n't so much as 
start a fire in the kitchen stove. 

The housing of workers for the great 
manufacturing plants is a problem beset 
with difficulties the solution of which is not 
yet found. I am not qualified to go exhaus- 
tively into the pros and cons of the many 
methods of studying it, with which any one 
at all interested in the subject is far more 

152 



HOUSE AND HOME 



familiar than 1, but there is one attempt at 
solution on the part of the Government 
which I am sure is mistaken, and that is 
where they insist that shacks or temporary 
buildings are fitting and proper for the 
housing of labourers. (I believe I have re- 
marked before that the gubernatorial mind 
finds it difficult to soar above incubators.) 
A married man never in this world is going 
to be happy for any length of time in a 
temporary makeshift, and I have never 
noticed an indifference to creature com- 
forts even in bachelors. How can any man 
be expected to settle down and stick to his 
work when the whole atmosphere about 
him is redolent of transientness? Even from 
the purely practical standpoint of efficient 
work, the scheme is poor policy, and it 
ignores wholly and outright that funda- 
mental element, necessary to the produc- 
tion of a good workman, or a good citizen, 
or a good anything else — a home. It may 
be that a home is poor, indifferent, or even 
bad; all the same it is a home; and as the 
good ladies of the Victorian era were wont 

153 



PERSONAL PKEJVniCES 



to declare that it was heller lo be nuirried, 
even thouj^h unliappily, than to be old 
maids, so I sloutly maintain thai it counts 
for L;()od in a man's life lo have, or lo have 
had, a iionie even I hough not an ideal one. 
In passint; ihrouL^h one of the tenement dis- 
tricts not long ago I met a woman rather 
the worse for drink, who had with her a 
small boy of five or six years old. She was 
sliaking and slapping and very distinctly 
ill-using him, and the cliild was howling 
lustily as the tears ran down his grimy little 
cheeks; yet with both his dirty little hands 
he clung desperately to the perpetrator of 
his woes, oblivious of the whacks in the far 
deeper instinct that she was also his only 
vsouree of refuge and help. The blows and 
the sliakings and the slaps were an incident, 
and would pass, and his instinct drove him 
l)c>low the incidentals of life to that reality 
which he recognized as fundamental. I may 
be a bit paradoxical; it is one of a woman's 
prerogati\es (and charms), but as I pon- 
dercHJ o\ er I lie tri\ ial incident, it seemed to 
point out the undeniable strength of a man's 

»54 



HOUSE AND HOME 



instinct for possession and being possessed; 
an instinct so strong that a child was oblivi- 
ous of a lower evil in his appeal to that 
which was the higher good. 

In reading the biography of a certain 
gentleman of note I was im[)ressed by his 
attitude of mind toward a life from which, 
though unusually full of o[)portunity, he 
yet felt himself unable to gain that exi)eri- 
ence which would solve for him its myster- 
ies and problems. He was so busy trying to 
fit life into a system of self-education, that 
he missed life itself, and it remained for 
him an eternal scaffolding which in no way 
helped him toward the erection of the fin- 
ished building. I wondered as I read if this 
might not be part of the trouble with our 
Government; it is so busy running up elab- 
orate scaffoldings of laws and regulations, 
prohibitions and embargoes, that the real 
and solid foundations cannot be found for 
the intricacy of the laws. I am dreadfully 
tired, anyway, of this prohibitive form of 
government; it is so hopelessly Mosaic in 
its methods. For thousands of years we 

155 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



have been la^ang down laws to the effect 
that you shall not do this evil, or one must 
not commit that crime, but it does not 
seem to me that the results have been 
highly satisfactory. If legislation is neces- 
sary (which I suppose it is), and were it 
my business to legislate (which I know 
it is n't), I should be greatly tempted to 
enact a new code by which personal up- 
rightness should be required, and in which 
every law should begin ''Thou shalt" 
instead of "Thou shalt not." I should have 
a special set framed for women to the effect 
that "Thou shalt" teach thy son to be 
true; "Thou shalt" keep thy daughter 
pure; "Thou shalt" see to it that thy hus- 
band is honest: I "allow as how" we should 
be kept pretty busy, but we might get 
somewhere in the end. It would simplify 
life a lot if, instead of a multiplicity of 
building laws forbidding this and that and 
the other thing, there should be one direct 
command, "Thou shalt provide the work- 
ing-man with a home and thou shalt see to 
it that it does not burn down." How simple. 

156 



HOUSE AND HOME 



And what burden of petty responsibilities 
would be lifted from the none-too-broad 
shoulders of the Government. 

We incline as a people to a somewhat 
homoeopathic treatment of life, I fear, and 
are apt to deal with symptoms rather than 
to search for the real cause of a difficulty. 
To provide a house for a working-man is 
meritorious as far as it goes, but it does not 
go deep enough. It leaves out of account 
altogether that inherent demand of man- 
kind, unconscious for the most part but 
none the less insistent, for something better 
and beyond bricks and bread. This is the 
underlying cause of much of the socialism 
and anarchism of to-day, only they don't 
know it. They shriek for money and riches 
because money and riches are the only good 
things that they know anything about, and 
when they have obtained them, they con- 
tinue to shriek, speechlessly and without 
purpose, because they do not know what it 
is that they are shrieking for. 

We Americans are tremendously proud 
of our scientific advancement. We have the 



157 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



vcM-y latest tiling in theories antl accom- 
plishments, and we cackle like a whole 
barnyardful of hens over tlie perfection of 
our ordinances and institutions, but there 
are moments when 1 have a horrid sus- 
picion that in some thin,ii:s we are scan- 
dalously behind the limes. We i)ersist in 
sticking assiduously to the obsolete theory 
that man is a sim])le animal, composed 
solely of llesh and blood, and think we have 
solved every problem connected with ex- 
istence if we provide for that portion of 
him; whereas, in reality, he is made up 
of some ten million ingredients, including 
sjnrit, which is every bit as insistent and 
demanding as body, only we are too stupid 
to see and provide for it. 

An excellent illustration of this is to be 
found in a comparison between the big 
hospitals of AnuMica and ICngland. Our 
great American hospitals are the very 
acme of phi-perfection; there is no doubt 
about that. They are hygienically and 
painfully clean; there is n't a (ly or a 
Haw (or a flower) to be found within 

158 



iiorsi-. AM) //().!//<: 



their pciiVrt i)(>rtals; aiul they aiv just: 
about as luiman as a lalkinj;-inac'luiu\ 
The vcMy latest (Hsan cMit\^ of sriiMieo and 
skill AVc v,\\cn (o ilw'w occupants, who 
arc ^\l>ll IihI aiul well carcnl lor, and thcro 
is ii'l a man, ANonian, or child anionj; tluMU 
who would nol ha\ c* incfcMTcd incarcera- 
tion in (lie [HMiitcnliaiN or county gaol, to 
their apparently fortunate i)ositiou. The 
paticMits i;rowl and i;runil)le; there is fre- 
(]UiMitl\- heard abuse of the food antl treat- 
nuMit ; the>' ari' often suspicious, unhapp>', 
and divscontentecl, and, aI)o\e all, the\ are 
invariably and desperateh' honiesi(-k. Now 
just niaki' a nuMital note of that last truth- 
ful stalenieni, pleasc>. Miscard if you wish 
all (he other aIleL;a( ions, and take that one 
alone. Ticture the hoims from which mosl 
of tluMU come nou need no description 
ol thiMU and conliast tluMi- picsi-nl sui'- 
loundini^s. i'Or a brii-l period the\' have 
every thini^ in this world that llesh and 
blood can nt'cd, and h)r which, wIumi in 
health and strcnj^th, they shriek and clam- 
oui', and yet, tlic) are confessedly and un- 

"5<> 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



mistakably homesick. In Heaven's name, 
what are they homesick for? 

I have visited several of the big Eng- 
lish hospitals, chiefly in London, where 
hygienic cleanliness is a physical impossi- 
bility — unless possibly, by superhuman 
efforts, in the operating-room. There are 
a few flies, literal as well as metaphorical; 
there are some flaws (and heaps of flowers) 
in most; and about every single one of 
them is an atmosphere of human-ness and 
home-li-ncss, to find which you might 
scratch in vain every hospital in the United 
States with a fine-tooth comb. I doubt if 
the patients are as well fed as ours; I 
know they are not so luxuriously cared for; 
the treatment given is much more con- 
servative and less theoretically scientific; 
yet — and mind you, this statement is not 
made upon my own authority, but upon 
that of a person whose business it is to 
know such things — the results turned out 
from the English hospitals are, taken 
by and large, rather more successful and 
satisfactory than are ours. How do you 

1 60 



HOUSE AND HOME 



account for it? I should like to see the face 
of any American physician or surgeon who 
may read the above ; it would be a study of 
incredulous contempt, and his opinion of 
my intellect would be unprintable. I know, 
for I have heard it frankly expressed by 
fraternal doctor friends; nevertheless I am 
perfectly willing to abide by my statement. 
I crossed the ocean once with a leading 
American surgeon who had visited some of 
these London hospitals, including one for 
treatment in his own special line of work. 
It was, perhaps, even a bit more grimy than 
some others, but, by actual comparison, 
its results were slightly in advance of 
those of his own pet and very perfect hos- 
pital at home; but this conveyed nothing 
to him. His contempt for English hospitals, 
including this particular one, remained un- 
mitigated, and when one murmured to him 
of puddings and proofs, he could think no 
differently. In spite of undeniable proof to 
the contrar>^, beneath his American nose, 
he would admit nothing, but continued 
unmoved in his patriotic conviction that 
i6i 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



English hospitals were hopelessly behind 
the times. After an absence from home of 
six months I seemed to feel a familiar at- 
mosphere steal about me as he talked. 
I wonder why. 

It is perfectly well known that in caring 
for the wounded during the War, the ele- 
ment of homesickness was so inimical to 
recovery that special arrangements were 
made by English hospitals, even so far 
away as France, to bring some member of 
a man's family to be near and visit him, 
and the importance of the experiment was 
proved beyond question by its success. 
Account for this if you can by any theory 
other than that there is a need in man for 
something beside a roof over his head and 
a "genteel sufficiency" in his stomach. A 
few students of life are beginning to realize 
this, but the material weighs heavily in the 
balance against the immaterial, and it is 
truly difficult to deal with the immaterial. 
We are scandalously rich in this country 
and, fortunately or unfortunately, our use 
of riches is not a matter that can be legis- 
162 



HOUSE AND HOME 



lated upon with any great success. We can 
be, and Heaven knows we are, taxed till 
(in my own personal case, anyway) the tax 
is bigger than the income, but that does 
not show us how to spend our money in a 
way that is of benefit to others, or to get 
the best fun out of it for ourselves. Yes, I 
know; we are tremendously generous and 
we do heaps of good with our gains, be they 
well or ill gotten, and this applies to the 
Government as well as to the private in- 
dividual. The expenditure of the individual 
is none of my business, but the handling of 
money by the Government is, because some 
of it is mine, and I strenuously object to 
many of the ways in which it is spent by 
that body. I do not care one bit, for in- 
stance, to help pay for a $70,000 post-office 
to serve a town of five thousand inhab- 
itants; but could I be assured that my 
money would be used intelligently for the 
proper housing of the people, the action of 
the Government would meet with my un- 
qualified approval. After all, the question 
of money boils itself down to the well-worn 
163 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



maxim of its use as a means to an end, and 
there could not be found a more solid or 
fundamental "end" than the provision of 
proper living conditions, which means the 
school, the playground and its sports, and, 
above all, the Home. 

England has been studying this subject 
for the past twenty years or more, and has 
been awake to this side of the problem for 
a very long time. It is natural that she 
should be the first to recognize it for, pro- 
verbially, the Englishman's house has al- 
ways been his castle, and he has taken 
deeper root and been more attached to his 
home, be it cottage or palace, than we of a 
more transient-loving race. In several cases 
their efforts have achieved fairly satisfac- 
tory solutions, and their attitude toward 
partial success is as characteristic of that 
nation and of France, as is that of our own. 
In spite of occasional success England and 
France still feel that the problem is further 
from its final solution than was ever Lei- 
cester Square from Tippcrary, and though 
cheered by a modicum of advance, they do 
164 



4 



HOUSE AND HOME 



not complacently sit down and purr, but 
promptly proceed to send commissions to 
other countries that they may learn and 
profit by the experience of others. I feel a 
certain delicacy about mentioning it, as I 
may be uninformed, but I have not heard 
of any similar voyages of discovery having 
been set on foot by Americans. This seems 
rather a pity because, even though we may 
be convinced that other nations have 
nothing to teach us, we might at least 
learn from them what we wish to avoid. 
Incidentally, we might also find out what 
we really want, for at present there seems 
to be a diversity of opinion about the mat- 
ter, and right there is where we slip up, for 
it is only a strong-minded, robust Public 
Opinion that will make Public Authority 
sit up and take notice. 

It is pretty generally admitted that 
houses cannot be built without proper 
foundations, and I have a deeply rooted 
conviction that the only safe foundation 
for a democracy lies in the provision of 
Homes. If Public Opinion could be edu- 

165 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



cated to know what laws were wise and 
necessary', and to demand intelligent un- 
derstanding and consistent administration 
of them on the part of legislators, perhaps 
the children on a school-house roof might 
be safeguarded from falling off, and the 
houses in a Jewish district be designed to 
meet the needs of the race without ar- 
bitrar>' ruling on the one hand and criminal 
fire hazard on the other. Laws are regret- 
tably necessary in an imperfect world and 
dwellings a desideratum, but how pleasant 
it would be if, instead of prohibitive rulings 
about houses, we might have intelligent 
inspection of Homes. I would draw atten- 
tion, however, to the qualifying adjective. 



IX 

QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 



IX 
QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

IT will not have escaped the notice of the 
keen and observant mind that the last 
year or two has been marked by what 
might be called an epidemic of processions 
and parades. They have been of all sorts 
and descriptions. Processions of business 
men in uninteresting tail coats or the 
greenish-yellow suit so beloved of down- 
town men; thousands of petticoats flapping 
to a stride that would be martial did not 
the high heel cause it to resemble the action 
of a hen out on business; floats of artistic 
ambitions and a little shaky as to historical 
accuracy; and, best of all, many real pro- 
cessions of real soldiers bent on real busi- 
ness in a real cause. It is an excellent method 
of arousing the enthusiasm of the peoi^le. 
The sight of the flag invariably meets with 
applause, and the many bands are inspiring 
even when the onward feet of the Christian 
soldiers become entangled with the girls 

169 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



they left behind them, and Dixie and John 
Brown get inextricably mixed. A proces- 
sion never fails to draw almost as vast a 
crowd as a baseball game, and the mere 
sight alone of such numbers is thrilling. 

I live on a perfectly good, level street 
with many convenient cross-streets divid- 
ing it, an ideal place for the formation and 
route of a procession and, once upon a 
time, one could take it comfortably for 
granted that every big procession w^ould 
sooner or later pass my house. This was 
extremely pleasant. My house was filled 
from attic to cellar with friends and rela- 
tives, 3-oung and old, including babies of 
all ages from the cradle upwards, who were 
being taught patriotism from their extreme 
youth while that of the old folks was re- 
newed. The street is broad, and therefore 
capable of holding without undue crowding 
a vast concourse of people ; the steps to the 
surrounding houses are all that could be 
desired for the accommodation of tired 
mothers, babies and children, and are 
never grudged for that purpose, and it is in 
170 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

all ways the street par excellence through 
which a procession should pass; but for 
some years now it has languished un- 
touched by the feet of multitudes and un- 
aroused by martial strains. Why? I am told 
that all parades and processions must now 
pass through the business part of the city, 
through the slums, and past the homes of 
the foreign population in order that any 
joy or benefit that may be derived from 
them may accrue to the "People." Ad- 
mirable and excellent sentiment! I agree 
with every word of it. But why are not my 
friends and I also the "People" ? Why do 
not I need the beneficial effects of the good 
things that — not the gods — but the 
country provides? Why should not my 
feelings be considered equally with the 
people who are in the shops or live in the 
slums? For many years I have felt that in 
this, as in many other ways, my rights as 
an American citizen are being trampled 
upon, and I propose to protest. 

As I reflect upon the pains taken to 
smooth the path and make plain the way 

171 



PERSONAL PKl'JUniCES 



for wliat is erroneously termed tlie "vvork- 
inpj" class over what with equal fallacy is 
ItrandiMJ \hc "liM'sure" class, I am filled 
with a sense of injustice, and I boldly state 
that in my opinion my counti-y is going 
hack on some of its principles. My ances- 
tors camr to tin's country because (fcorge 
Washington promised that they should be 
free, e(iual, and unoi)i)ressed, and I claim 
that n\y country has made it imi){)ssible 
lor me to be in any one of those three de- 
sirable positions. To begin with, no countiy 
in the world declares so loudly as does ours 
that there is no such distinction as that of 
class. It is a lie, of course. There has been 
class distinction e\ er since Eve spanked 
Cain for unbrotherly action toward Abel, 
and there always will be until the millen- 
nium — and then there will probably be 
degrees of righteousness; and to the prac- 
tical mind it would seem but common sense 
to admit it and to regulate life accordingly. 
There will alwa>s be those who lead and 
those who are led, but they should be 
labelled in less misleading terms. 
172 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

The "working;" class. 1 challenge the 
monopoly of the adjective. There may be 
in this country a certain number of people 
who live a leisure or idle life, but if this be 
true the number is so small as to be negli- 
gible, and the term "leisure" or ''upper" 
class is, therefore, I suppose, applied to 
those who earn their living by their brains 
rather than by their hands. It is really a 
perfectl}- good way of earning a living, al- 
though man}' people deny it. If payment in 
money is the standartl of compensation, 
then brain-work nuist take rank far below 
that of manual labour, for not only is 
it literally as well as comparatively less 
highly paid, but the wage of the class who 
monopolize the title "working" is set and 
safeguarded by an arbitrary authority 
which dictates not only what the wage 
shall be, but the hours during which work 
may be done. The brain-worker has no 
such sccurit>-. 

On the Frida>' afternoon about half-past 
three of a ver>- cold day last winter, I was 
careless enough to break a large pane of 

1/3 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



glass in my bedroom window. Realizing 
that it was growing late in the day, I lost 
no time in telephoning the glazier to re- 
quest that he would come up at once and 
replace it. He apologized profusely, re- 
gretting in tearful accents that every one 
of his own men was out, and that he had 
no one to send. I resigned myself uncom- 
plainingly to the prospect of undressing 
and going to bed in a temperature where 
the water in a vase of flowers was already 
skimming over with a coating of ice, and 
remarked with truly Christian acceptance 
of the inevitable, "But you will be sure to 
send some one the very first thing in the 
morning, won't you?" The reply came in 
tones of conscious superiority — "We don't 
work on Saturdays." And they did n't. 
Friday afternoon, all Saturday and Sun- 
day, that yawning hole remained in my 
window, and, every other room in the house 
being occupied, for three shivering nights 
and mornings I dressed and undressed in 
that icy blast with the cold of which no 
open fire nor furnace could compete. 

174 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

The hours of labour legalized by the 
Government are from 8 to 12 a.m. and 
I to 5 P.M., and the strict observance of 
this law on the part of our fellow citizens 
is edifying to behold. I had a plumber at 
work in my bathroom not long ago, and I 
watched with fascinated eyes as he played 
little games of magic with his glowing 
poker and molten lead. True to the ro- 
mance of fairy tales, as the clock struck the 
witching hour of twelve, he dropped that 
red-hot poker with such prompt obedience 
to its call that it burned a large and very 
evil-smelling hole in my much-prized new 
linoleum, to accomplish the purchase of 
which I had scraped together the pennies 
by the wearing of my old hat for the third 
winter and abstention from many thrilling 
movies. The plumber did not pay for the 
damage, of course, and I know my place 
quite too well to have suggested it, but I 
suspected later from the size of the bill 
that he had charged me the amount that 
I might have asked him for damages. 

If one is very rich, salvation from abso- 

175 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



lute cataclysm may occasionally be ob- 
tained by payment for over-time, and this 
is a point upon which the Government 
legislates very strictly. The men who have 
selected trade as their calling in life may, 
under certain circumstances and if they 
so wish, work over-time, but for this the 
Government is very particular to insist 
that they shall be paid extra, frequently 
dictating what the amount shall be. This 
is fair and as it should be, and perhaps it 
may be excusable at this point to make a 
little excursion into apparent irrelevancy 
upon the subject of "tips," a custom which 
I stoutly defend. If I go to visit friends, 
their serx'ants are obliged to do work for 
me which is outside their regular routine 
as arranged for when they were engaged 
and their wages settled, and it is often 
work that is more purel}' personal than 
that involved in the making of my bed or 
the dusting of my room. In the days when 
females were buttoned up behind it was 
very distinctly more; either a long row of 
ladies stood each fastening the dress of the 
176 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 



one in front of her, or else for half an hour 
before dinner, the maid fled in frenzied 
haste from one room to another in re- 
sponse to the plaintive requests issuing 
from half-opened doors that she would 
"please come and do me up." This and 
similar services may very properly be re- 
garded as over-time work, and I do not 
want to accept such service without show- 
ing, by a more convincing evidence than 
word of mouth, that I appreciate it. The 
legitimate quarrel with tipping is in the 
exorbitance shown by those to whom money 
is no object and by whose prodigality of 
acknowledgement all economic balance is 
upset and scattered to the four winds of 
heaven. This is not fair, either as regards 
economic balance nor toward those who 
are unable to give so largely; nor do I be- 
lieve that it meets with the unqualified 
approval of those who receive it. I lunched 
at a restaurant not long ago at a table next 
that occupied by a man who was enter- 
taining two women. He had a most elab- 
orate luncheon, including champagne, of 
177 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



which only one glass apiece was drunk out 
of each bottle, a fresh supply being req- 
uisitioned after each drink, and he tipped 
the waiter with a twenty dollar bill. 
The waiter did not happen to be a friend 
of mine and I had no conversation with 
him, but it was entirely unnecessary; the 
expression of his face spoke more clearly 
than a whole dictionar^^ful of words. If I 
could command such an expression of 
wordless contempt, I should treasure it as 
an invaluable asset. Reasonable tipping is 
first cousin to payment for over-time work, 
and as such should be acknowledged, but 
why draw the line as to what class of work 
should be paid over- time and what should 
not? Why should the Government protect 
the over-time pay of one class and not of 
another? 

The clearest illustration, perhaps, of this 
unjust legislation is shown in the line 
drawn between the profession of archi- 
tecture, which is labour with the brain, 
and the manual labour of trades necessary 
for building, both of which are interde- 

178 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

pendent and the one as indispensable as 
the other. The profession of architecture 
does not, as so vast a majority of people 
believe, consist solely in drawing pretty 
pictures and making straight lines to go 
in different directions on paper. In addi- 
tion to this ability, the true architect must 
have a working knowledge of pretty much 
every trade under heaven. It is impera- 
tive that he should know good carpentry, 
brick-laying, and plumbing; of soils and 
gardening; about plastering, painting, and 
electricity ; in short, the architect does not, 
as is generally supposed, build a house by 
the simple expedient of drawing a few 
plans, and sitting down, like a hatching 
hen, to watch somebody else do the work. 
The acquisition of the knowledge necessary 
to this end means years of work, study, 
and experience, and the production of the 
working drawings alone, "precept upon 
precept, line upon line," accounting for 
every square inch of every different ma- 
terial used in the construction of a build- 
ing, is a labour but vaguely understanded 
179 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



of the multitude. Very frequently, and 
especialty upon Government work and in 
war- times, over- time work is required, and 
for this the Government legislates very 
strictly indeed. The department which de- 
mands for over- time work the payment 
of time and a half to all mechanics and 
labourers, demands with equal explicitness 
that, to professional employees, no addi- 
tional payment shall be made. Why this 
class distinction? Far be it from me to 
put my fingers into public pies — I have 
quite enough private ones in the baking; 
but I see no reason why a share in this pie 
does not rightfully belong to me. It is not 
fair that in the fixing of payment for labour, 
either brain or manual, the one who pays 
that price should have no voice in the set- 
ting of it. For many years we have been 
fighting corporations as an evil that a 
democracy will not endure, yet the labour 
unions (excellent institutions when prop- 
erly handled) have been so upheld by the 
Government that they have become the 
closest kind of corporation, dictating with 
1 80 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

an arrogance, strongly suggestive of the 
late ruler of Germany, just what price 
millions of people outside that corpora- 
tion shall pay for work done for them, and 
without the provision of which work the 
working-man could not live. 

Moreover, I am not free to employ, if I pre- 
fer, a workman outside that organization ; if 
I do so, the workman and I both suffer. Also, 
I am obliged to pay the same price for bad 
work as for good. Not only must I pay for 
a piece of work which is so poor that it 
must be done over again, and I therefore 
pay twice, but a skilled workman must 
stand by and see a boy, who has not yet 
learned the rudiments of his trade, paid 
the same wage as he, himself, deserves. He 
may want to work well and to work when 
he wishes, but that close corporation steps 
in and says, "You shall work only when 
and how we choose." Yet we cackle and 
crow that we are a "free" nation. If this 
is democracy, I feel that I might be able to 
appreciate the advantages of a monarchy. 

The evils of such legislation are patent — 
i8i 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



or should be — to the least observant. For 
one thing by this limiting of the character 
and quality of labour, it sorely discourages 
all good, efficient work and sublimely en- 
courages the idle and incompetent, and it 
is in just this latter class where the evil 
is most clearly shown to lie. The skilled 
workman has a certain pride in his work 
and in his attitude toward it, but the com- 
mon labourer works for his pay only. The 
worse he does it, and the less energy he puts 
into it, the greater his gain, and the fact 
that b}^ this attitude he is responsible for 
long delay and additional expense to others, 
including the Government which protects 
and encourages him in it, is a matter of 
perfect indifference to him and, apparently, 
to the Government as well. 

Already I must wait, at whatever cost, 
from Friday till Monday to have certain 
kinds of work done, and few men would 
work after five o'clock without over-time 
pay if it were to save a life; now I am told 
that this "labouring" class is to have 
a six-hour day with eight-hour payment. 

182 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

Where do I come in on that arrangement? 
With all my heart and soul I believe that 
the man who labours should be paid and 
well paid, but with equal conviction I be- 
lieve (i) that payment should be just, and 
(2) that it should not be confined arbitra- 
rily to one class of labour. I do not doubt 
that there was a time when the man who 
worked with his hands was underpaid (of 
the extent of his "oppression" I am for 
several reasons a bit sceptical), but no 
sane man can pretend that the situation is 
not changed, and it is now a useless waste 
of time and energy to kick so unequivo- 
cally a "dead horse" as that of the "op- 
pressed" working-man. That the skilled 
and unskilled workman, for instance, should 
be paid the same wage is unjust in the ex- 
treme, and that the skilled workman does 
not kick so alive and thoroughly vicious a 
"horse" only shows that while he once 
laboured under the possibl}^ just convic- 
tion that he was oppressed by certain peo- 
ple whom he considered to be in a different 
class from himself, he is now, apparently, 
183 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



quite unconscious that he is being in- 
sulted and cheated by those of his very own 
crowd. 

I do not quarrel with the Government 
nor with any other body of people who leg- 
islate to protect the interests of any class 
whatever, but I do think it unfair that one 
class of worker should be defended at the 
expense of another. The wages of the man- 
ual labourer have not only never been so 
high, but are rising from week to week — 
a matter for rejoicing; but the wage of the 
professional man is not one penny the 
more. Is it not a natural question on my 
part to ask why my Government, who 
promises me freedom and equality, should 
permit this? Why must everything be 
made easy for one class to the exclusion of 
another? Why must all those processions 
pass through the streets inhabited by an- 
other class of labour, and not through those 
lived in by mine? I revert to that procession 
because it seems to me symbolic of the fact 
that a whole lot of perfectly good sympathy 
is being wasted upon entirely the wrong 
184 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

lot of people. The burden of underpayment 
and oppression is now being laid upon that 
class of people whose brains provide labour 
for those who work with their hands, and 
if, under this oppression, brains "go on 
strike," it will be a case of killing the goose 
that lays the golden eggs. 

Comfortable as it may have been for the 
rich in the days when manual labour was 
underpaid, no decent man or woman has 
any desire to return to that time. I am not 
a socialist, and there is nothing in this 
world in which I have so profound a dis- 
belief as in the doctrine of equality in any 
and every sense in which it can be used; 
for one reason, because I have never yet 
found any human being who desired it. 
The Socialists shriek for equality, but 
what they strive for is ascendancy. If, 
however, with the cry for Equality there 
should be coupled the demand for Quality, 
the principle might possibly be one to offer 
as a w^orking basis upon which to found a 
better understanding betw^een the people 
of different qualifications; but quality of 

185 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



work, manners, morals, or character meets 
with but scanty attention in these da^'s 
when the world is obsessed with the one 
standard of gain for money and of money. 
I have never >'et heard of a body of men 
who went on strike because the quality of 
their work was not appreciated, but I offer 
the suggestion to the "walking delegate" 
as a new idea, certainly more novel and 
one better worth the suffering and incon- 
venience entailed than their objects here- 
tofore. I should also take pleasure in mak- 
ing a few observations to the effect that 
Equality plus Quality would impart to 
democracy a stability in which, under 
present conditions, one feels it to be a bit 
lacking. 

With all that is to be regretted In the 
standards of to-day, the world is unques- 
tionably striving for a better and higher 
standard to which it will eventually attain. 
When Quality of service shall be in Equal- 
ity with the rise of compensation; when 
the Quality of man's honour and honesty 
are on an Equality of mutual magnanim- 
i86 



QUALITY VERSUS EQUALITY 

ity ; when we have learned that if we take 
care of the Quahty the Equahty will take 
care of itself, we shall have realized a de- 
mocracy that is as yet but a loyal dream. 



X 

DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 



X 

DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

I LIKE dinner-parties because I almost 
always find somebody who does not 
agree with me about something, and the 
ensuing conversation is apt to be lively 
enough to send me home feeling mentally 
quite frisky. I attended one not long ago, 
however, where the difference in opinion 
was indubitable enough, but from which I 
returned much depressed. 

I was escorted into the dining-room by 
an agreeable, though slightly aggressive, 
gentleman, who cheerily began the con- 
versation by the remark, "Say" (I regret 
to state that he is a Bostonian) "Say, t 
don't think much of these Britishers of 
yours." 

I did not quite understand why Great 
Britain and all her Colonies should be 
planted upon the shoulders of me, a per- 
fectly innocent American, but I accepted 
the charge unmurmuringly, and enquired 
191 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



why his opinion of them was so modest. 
His reply was of a length that enabled me 
to get halfway through my soup, but the 
gist of it seemed to be that they gave them- 
selves "such everlasting airs." I replied 
that that was a perfectly horrid trait (and 
I did not pronounce it "tray," either), and 
that to a modest and self-effacing nation 
like our own, it was particularly exasper- 
ating. 

"I'm dead tired," he continued, "of 
having them come over here all dolled up 
in their Sam Browne belts, and telling us 
what they did in France, and how they 
fought in Flanders, and how much their 
fleet had accomplished; one would think 
they had won the War entirely by them- 
selves." "That is queer," I replied, "be- 
cause every single Englishman I have seen 
since the War began, has told me himself 
that he had done nothing." 

I dislike telling long stories to men be- 
cause they so much prefer telling them to 
me, so I refrained from recounting to my 
companion the opinions expressed by the 
192 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

Captain of the when he dined with 

me. It had just been broken to him that he 
would have to make a speech in Symphony 
Hall the next night, and his remarks were 
not printable in their entirety. His temper 
was irretrievably mislaid, and he growled 
like the proverbial (English) bear. He 
"didn't Hke makin' speeches one little 
bit"; he "would have to tell about" what 
he had done in the War — "rotten idea"; 
he "hadn't done anything but the day's 
work, anyway." This last statement could 
not be regarded as strictly truthful. I hap- 
pened to know, as a matter of fact, that he 
had done so preposterously more than his 
"day's work" that, had he belonged to a 
labour union, he would have been dis- 
ciplined to a certainty. I did not say all 
this, but I thought it, and before I had 
time to invent some harmless reply the 
comfortably portly person on my other 
side put his oar into the troubled waters of 
the conversation. 

"Didn't I hear," he said, "that much 
of the friction between the American and 

193 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



English privates was because the Tommies 
speak the better EngHsh, and that our men 
considered them to be 'putting on side?"* 

"I don't care a about their gram- 
mar," answered the originator of this har- 
monious conversation, ''but their accent 
is enough to drive anybody to drink — if 
there was any drink left to be driven to," 
he added vindictively. 

I opened my mouth to reply, but shut it 
up again quickly, mindful of a recent re- 
mark made by my favourite nephew. 

He had sat, quite polite and well-be- 
haved, throughout the call of an English 
friend, and had appeared much interested 
in the conversation. When the family were 
collected at the dinner-table, he remarked 
elegantly, "Gosh, but you ought to have 
been here this afternoon when Mr. Blank 
w^as calling. Auntie got her best English 
accent out of the moth-balls where she 
packs it away, and it was so thick you 
could cut it w^ith a knife." 

This slight pause for self-restraint had 
given me time to suspect that the con- 
194 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

versational atmosphere was in danger of 
becoming overheated, so I thought it wise 
to change the subject to national rather 
than international affairs. Later I came 
home feeling distinctly low in my mind 
because of the too evident anti-British 
feelings of my dinner-party neighbours. I 
undressed and crawled dismally into bed, 
where I curled myself around a hot-water 
bottle and gave way to unbridled gloom. 

It is regrettable that so few people ap- 
preciate the soothing qualities of that 
humble utensil. I am quite sure that Mr. 
Lloyd George would be more amenable 
and Mr. Wilson less pernicketty if they 
would both adopt its use. After a short 
half-hour of worr^- , its gentle warmth per- 
meated even to my brain, and I began to 
meditate upon the discord between the 
two countries with less troubled mind. 
Even enfolded within its genial glow, I 
could not deny that the two nationalities 
are tremendously different, but it began to 
dawn upon me that the reason for the differ- 
ence is because they are so exactly alike. 

195 



ri'lRSONA L PRKJ UDl CES 



Wc Anicricaiis love our own country so 
dearly that wo are always going away from 
it, in order to enjoy the sensation of getting 
back and feeling how nuich superior we arc 
to any olher nation. Being an adaptable 
people, we are quick to appreciate the 
beauty of foreign countries, the novelty 
of their dissimilar scenery and architec- 
ture, and the fascination of an unfamiliar 
tongue. 

We go to France and express our affection 
for her; we go to Ital>' and are conscious of 
our love for her; we go to h^gypt and stand 
in wonder before her past; we used to go 
to (\M-man\ to atlmire her efficiency and 
wrestle with her language, but wc don't 
any more. At the end of our trip we make a 
bee-line for luigland to get aboard ship for 
the States, and lind ourselves — at home! 
"I'he same sceniM\ , similar architecture, 
familiar habits and customs, and, above all, 
an identical language. Of course it seems 
queiM- that they should dilTer from us in 
so m.m\ w.iNs wiuch lhe>' don't, really, 
except in trivialities. 

196 



PIFFEKKXCES AXD DISTIXCTIOXS 

Evonbody knows that tri\ lalitios exas- 
perate people, especially men; nn- luishaiul 
and my fa\'oiirite nephew, for instance. 
One would think they were double-dis- 
tilled feniininit>' by the way they quarrel 
over their ck)lhes. The F.N. loathes Eng- 
lish clothes, and wears only the American 
variety, fitted in at the waist, and economi- 
cal as to material at the top of the trousers. 
My husband tells him that any man who is 
obliged to button the low^est button of his 
waistcoat in order to conceal his shirt is 
a man improperh- dressed. On the other 
hand, my husband resoluteh' refuses to 
wear any clothes at all unless the>' are 
made in London, and the F'.N. retorts that 
he'd rather show a bit of nice white shirt 
than have to button his back collar button 
to the top of his pants. Both of them are 
supposed to have intelligent views and 
opinions upon international alTairs, but as 
a real matter of fact, the>' do not become 
half so infuriated over the doings of the 
respective National Governments as they 
do over the "set" of their respective per- 
197 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



sonal pants. They appear to me to be much 
like all other men. 

The use of terms as applied to wearing 
apparel is also graphically illustrative of 
distinction minus difference in the two 
countries. Individually, I prefer trousers 
to pants (I prefer them to petticoats, for 
that matter), but as between two demo- 
cratic countries, surely one may be per- 
mitted one's little personal predilections. 

I spent one summer in a small English 
town where the natives laughed consum- 
cdly when I remarked innocently that I 
had been "to the dry-goods store to buy a 
spool of thread," because, they assured me 
carefully, what it should be called was "a 
reel of cotton." Similarly, when I called on 
a friend, and found tied to the doorbell a 
neat little card bearing the information 
that the parlour-maid was slightly deaf, 
and that if the doorbell was not answered 
promptly, would the caller please step in- 
side and ring the dinner-bell, I sat down on 
that doorstep and laughed till I cried. 

It is more or less the same with our slang, 
198 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

and whether the English or American va- 
riety is the more choice and elegant is a 
matter of taste. I only know that neither of 
us can use the other's with that nicety of 
correctness expressive of its true perfection. 
One year I was visiting some English 
people in a cathedral town, where I had 
made many pleasant friends. Passing down 
the street one day, I fell jo3^fully into the 
arms of three Boston friends, who were there 
for only the proverbial American day and 
night. One has friends and friends; some of 
them are of a variety that one is particu- 
larly proud to show off to the English, and 
these were of this species. I promptly sent 
a message to the Bishop's Palace to ask if 
I might bring them in to afternoon tea, and 
we were cordially welcomed. One of the 
three was a brother of the other two, and 
was ' possessed of charming manners and 
engaging ways. As I introduced him to our 
hostess, my American heart swelled with 
pride, and I felt that she would at last 
know what Boston could produce when it 
really tried. He returned his empty cup to 
199 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



the tea-table, and was hospitably pressed 
by his hostess to have another. 

"Thank 3'ou," said my Boston friend, 
with his most engaging smile and a beauti- 
ful bow, " I think I will stand on one cup." 

Our hostess looked helplessly back and 
forth between my friend and the tea-cup, 
and I retired hastily, leaving my Boston 
friend to get himself out of the difficulty in 
his own charming way. 

One may trust most American men to 
extricate themselves adroitly from any 
similar difficulties in private conversation, 
especially with a woman, but when it comes 
to public speaking, I listen with about the 
same degree of nervous apprehension to 
the speakers of one nation as of the other. 
We are a nation of born speakers, and we 
not only appreciate ourselves in that line, 
but we also appreciate it in others. I fre- 
quently feel, however, that neither English 
nor American speakers are invariably 
happy in expressing themselves. 

One English speaker was here not long 
ago, the most earnest purpose of his soul 

200 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

being to unite, by bonds of perfect under- 
standing, the feelings of the two countries. 
His chief argument was that England could 
not possibly be inimical to the States be- 
cause she knew so little about them. He 
alluded particularly to our "Boston Tea- 
Party," and assured us that few, if any- 
body, in England had ever heard of it. 
I am not a Bostonian, but I am very proud 
of that episode, and my little feelings were 
quite hurt. 

That attitude of knowing nothing and 
caring less about what happens in the 
world outside their own, particular baili- 
wick is one of England's most valuable 
assets; one that all my life I have endeav- 
oured assiduously but unsuccessfully to ac- 
quire. A mind so impervious to other peo- 
ple's business is one source of England's 
placid strength, and it ought to make them 
especially popular with us, for I defy any- 
body who has followed the vicissitudes of 
the Treaty and the League of Nations, to 
deny that "None of our business" is the 
watchword of our nation. But never mind; 

201 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



we win "grow up" some day to know bet- 
ter; and meantime it is not only the Eng- 
lishman who says things that he might wish 
he had expressed differently. 

A well-known British officer spoke in 
Boston one night, and was introduced to 
a very large audience by a pure American 
— that is, as pure as we make them. The 
introduction was not of that brevity which 
is quoted as perfection, and I began to be 
nervous before he had reached the end of 
his first ten minutes. Later, when he an- 
nounced with emphasis that "we" could 
not have won the War if it had not been for 
France; "we" could not have won the War 
if it had not been for the Belgians, and 
(with that British officer at his elbow) "we" 
could not have won the War without Eng- 
land, my nervous system suffered a col- 
lapse from which it has not yet recovered. 
As a matter of fact, he did not in the least 
mean what he implied, as was evident by 
the context. What he wished to express was 
that the War could not have been won by 
the Allies had not each country rendered 

202 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

its special service in its special place. One 
must admit, however, that there was not 
much to choose between the Englishman 
and the American so far as tactfulness is 
concerned. I think the palm for that particu- 
lar gift must be given to one especial man. 
An Englishman is never more soul-satis- 
fying than when he is a Scotchman, and 
the peculiarly judicious admixture to whom 
I allude has done more to translate to one 
another the two countries than anything 
outside a petticoat that I am acquainted 
with. The hereditary right to an abbrevi- 
ated excuse for that article of clothing may 
account for his tact and discretion. In 
speaking here on one occasion, he admitted 
modestly that the American boys in Eng- 
land may have learned some things to their 
advantage, and he stated unequivocally 
that the English boys had learned a great 
deal from ours; one of them being that "an 
American loves and is proud of his country, 
and is not ashamed to say so." Nobody 
wholly divorced from a petticoat could pos- 
sibly have said that so prettily. 
203 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



To return to the dinner-bell and the 
spool of thread, from which, hen-like, I 
have strayed, I do not feel in the least 
apologetic for my own use of the vernacu- 
lar, nor am I making fun of a perfectly 
straightforward way of simplifying a do- 
mestic situation; they are both perfectly 
good methods of expression. They do, how- 
ever, serve admirably to illustrate some of 
the differences of ways, manners, and cus- 
toms which between the two countries are 
a great deal harder to understand, and, 
sometimes, more difficult to excuse, than 
the fundamental matters in which, thank 
God, they do not so often clash. Diplo- 
macy, commerce, international law are, of 
course, of some slight importance, but even 
the aforesaid hot-water bottle did not fur- 
nish me with sufficient brains to argue 
about them, even with myself — the only 
opponent I have ever been able to con- 
vince. Privately, I do not think they 
amount to much, anyway. I frankly doubt 
if I am alone in a happy ignorance of in- 
ternational affairs that prevents me from 
204 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

lying awake o' nights worrying over them, 
but I know I have plenty of good company 
in caring a lot if my people mistake British 
shyness and gaucherie for "everlasting 
airs," or the British, not knowing us very 
well, imagine that I and my people eat 
with our knives or are unenlightened as to 
the advantages of the daily bath. I am in- 
clined to think that it is pretty fairly im- 
portant for us English-speaking nations to 
stand very closely together for the next 
century or two, and if we are to be perpetu- 
ally spatting because, metaphorically, they 
call a reel of cotton what we call a spool of 
thread, it would be singularly unintelligent 
on the part of both of us. They think we 
are queer, and we know they are ; it would 
seem common sense to let it go at that. 

One of the matters in which the English 
are apt to be mistaken with regard to the 
United States is our geography. Person- 
ally, I am not able to resent it because I am 
not very strong on that science myself, and 
also because I think we must allow that we 
do cover a rather large portion of the map 

205 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



to commit to memory. A very dear old 
English friend was immensely interested 
when we first met, to learn that we came 
from America ; when he heard that we lived 
in Boston (which he had ascertained was 
not in South America) he became actually 
excited. He wanted to know if we had ever 
met his brother who lived in Keokuk. The 
only defence I can make of such ignorance 
is that a short time ago I went upstairs and 
asked of my deputy-grandson (aged two 
weeks), his special attendant, his mother, 
and two other perfectly good people, the 
following questions: "In what country is 
Biarritz? In what county is situated the 
cathedral town of Canterbury? and. What 
State proudly boasts the possession of Oil 
City?" Not one of them could answer a 
single one of the questions; not even the 
" Deputy," who is the wisest of us all. After 
the above exhibition of ignorance on the 
part of my personal friends and fellow citi- 
zens, it is only decent on my part to state 
that I, myself, last week addressed a letter 
to "Detroit, Mississippi." 

206 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

The few people who, twenty years ago, 
served afternoon tea here, were regarded 
as "putting on side," but we have become 
so far infected by this effeminacy that, 
now a days, it is the general custom. I have 
heard a great many Americans jeer because 
the English officers in the trenches de- 
manded their afternoon tea just as much as 
if they were at home. I do not wish to be 
considered too excessively pro-British, but 
really, it would seem to me reasonable to 
let a man have pretty much anything he 
wanted under those circumstances. I can- 
not feel that there is a distinguishable dif- 
ference between tea in the trenches, which 
was their day's work, and tea in the offices 
of two or three business firms, where I 
know, from personal experience, it is served 
for the office force every day. (I know also 
of one man who provides an opera ticket 
for his office force, to be used in turn once 
a week throughout the season. I consider 
this the apotheosis of Boston.) Both seem 
to me entirely appropriate places in which 
to serve that comforting beverage, for both 

207 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



forces are doing a work which needs nour- 
ishment, and there is n't a man aUve with 
whom an empty stomach is not accompa- 
nied by a "cameeHous hump." 

Then, too, our customs differ. The Eng- 
lish engaged girl marks her possessions with 
the name or initials which she is to bear 
in the future. Our girls, in contemplating 
what an emigrant once called "committing 
a matrimony," mark all their silver and 
linen with the initials of their maiden name; 
the name of a person who, in a short time, 
will no longer exist. It is charmingly senti- 
mental to know that we are following an 
old Dutch custom; we have so few tradi- 
tions that one longs to cling to them furi- 
ously, but we must in honesty admit that 
it does not seem very practical as a means 
of identification in the wash or elsewhere. 
In fact, when my best friend went off on 
her wedding trip, with her beautiful new 
portmanteau marked loudly with her 
maiden initials, travelling sociably with that 
of her husband bearing a quite differ- 
ent letter, it savoured slightly of impro- 

208 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

priety. It had also its practical drawbacks, 
for one letter being B, and the other W, 
they were obliged to chase themselves from 
one end of ever>^ custom-house to the other 
in order to effect a union between the two. 
They were rather unmitigated Americans, 
these friends of mine, and did not have a 
high opinion of English and foreign modes 
of travel, which they liked to compare with 
our own. Personally, I have small opinion 
of either method. To travel in a little nasty, 
draughty compartment, with (usually) 
one's back to the engine, or in a bigger 
compartment, where the air is vile, and the 
seats of those vicious plush chairs drag 
one's skirts hind-side-to, or one's trousers 
into spirals up the backbone, seems to me 
much of a muchness. If anybody is anti- 
British on account of the comparison in 
travel, I shall feel more respect for him if 
he does not mention it. I call it a drawn 
game. 

The subject of titles is a never-ending 
topic of joyous dissension the world over. 
We do not grow them here, unless one may 
209 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



count as such the attainment of Judge, 
Colonel, or similar brevet rank. I should 
like, however, to draw attention to the 
frequency with which I see gentlemen 
alluded to in our newspapers as "Barber" 
Smith, or "Professor" Getemwell, or even 
"Slayer" Jones, which proves our funda- 
mental craving for the article. I really do 
not know which nation is most provocative 
of mirth on this subject. I have heard just 
exactly as many English as Americans ex- 
press their contempt for "such rubbish," 
and declare with immense solemnity that 
they would not accept a title if it was of- 
fered to. them. 

It is usually a pretty safe statement to 
make, especially in the case of the Ameri- 
can; and though I have known only one 
person (an Englishman, by the way) who 
actually refused the offer when it did come, 
the effect of the remark is truly impressive. 
I do not believe it, of course. I am much 
more inclined to think that in their deepest 
and darkest hearts the individuals of both 
nations adore them, only they are not 

210 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

honest enough to admit it. This is a mis- 
take. To be gratified by so simple a pleas- 
ure is a perfectly incorrupt and inoffen- 
sive taste and shows an artless mind. I 
refrain from banal remarks upon the "no- 
blesse oblige'* responsibilities of the article 
in question. 

As to the respective merits of baseball 
and cricket, I refuse to judge. When the 
millennium arrives and our political differ- 
ences are dead and buried ; when our man- 
ners, morals, and minds are identical; 
when the Lion and the Eagle have curled 
up together in urbane amity; even then, 
the sight of a cricket bat and a baseball 
bat, singly or together, will dissolve the 
amalgamated nations once more into their 
component parts. 

Never in all this world did I expect to 
live to see a King of England "throw off" 
for a baseball game; but the thought of an 
American undertaking to witness a game of 
cricket, from its leisurely beginning to its 
long-drawn-out end, is truly humorous. 
Nothing could be better illustrative of the 

211 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



superficial differences in the characteristics 
of the two nations than in their adoption of 
these two sports. The EngHsh Hke their ex- 
citements spread neatly and evenly over a 
generous amount of time; we prefer ours 
crowded into one or two hours of delirious 
joy. They ride, drive, or motor to the 
cricket field in so tranquil and temperate a 
manner as to make one suspect that they 
are out for pleasure, while we arrive at the 
baseball field only at the expense of a free 
fight — which is quite considered part of 
the fun. 

There may be other ways in which the 
English misjudge the Americans, but in 
none so unjustly as in their desire for en- 
joyment. He believes the American man 
to be immersed in business to the exclu- 
sion of every other thought; nothing could 
be more unjust; in the baseball season, 
anyway. A **fan" would cheerfully give up 
his business, his wife, his dinner, and his 
mother-in-law before he would allow any- 
thing to interfere with his attendance at 
one of the "big" games of the season. I do 

212 



DIFFERENCES AND DTSTINCTIONS 

not know what becomes of the business. It 
is probably left in the sorrowing charQ:c of 
an envious office boy, who cannot have 
much to do, as there is nobody left to do it. 
The excitement of the game drowns, for 
the moment, every other emotion of which 
the human heart is capable. I know, for I 
have attended one. On that occasion a 
woman behind me fainted away, and a man 
in front of me fell in an epileptic fit, so I 
decided not to go to any more. Could any- 
thing be more antipodean to cricket? 

Yet right there the difference ends. They 
are both games; they are alike even to the 
extent of being played with bats, balls, and 
runs; but above all they are alike in that 
the rules of both demand justice, fair play, 
and honour, and in that the judgement of 
the people is against those who do not com- 
ply with them. These are the points that 
really matter, and they are also the points 
upon which the English-speaking nations 
are wholly and utterly at one. 

I have been told many times the number 
of foreign countries whose emigrants have 

213 



PERSONAL PREJUDICES 



become naturalized Americans; I am sorry 
that my brain is too small to retain the in- 
formation, because it is distinctly impres- 
sive; yet with all that influx of alien races, 
the United States has never adopted other 
than Saxon language, or standards of life 
and morals ; not because of leagues or votes, 
or even of choice, but instinctively and as 
a matter of course. 

The lives and customs of the two nations 
are not identical; the Governments differ 
slightly in name and form (they have a king 
as their titular head, we have a college pro- 
fessor or a retired tradesman, as the case 
may be) ; but when it comes right down to 
fundamental principles, we are scandalously 
alike. 

It is not through international laws or 
diplomacy or design that England and the 
United States shall stand together in the 
years to come, but simply and solely be- 
cause neither of them can help it, whether 
they want to or not. A like standard of 
Honour and Honesty, and an identical goal 
of Freedom and Democracy, constitute too 
214 



DIFFERENCES AND DISTINCTIONS 

solid a foundation for the building-up of a 
reformed world to be easily undermined. 

If the Lion and the Eagle can rest to- 
gether in peace, it is not for their disrespect- 
ful offspring to disturb them. 



THE END 



EPILOGUE 

BY THE FAVOURITE NEPHEW 

SO the book is done; the last, or perhaps 
only the latest, prejudice has been 
published far and wide, and the dragon 
sleeps. 

What a dragon it is ! Nothing escapes her 
roaming eye, be it never so innocent or 
small. If the baby cries, the fact is pounced 
upon and the newest chapter of the book is 
headed, "The Cruelty of Modern Parents"; 
if one is late for a meal, one finds scattered 
about the dragon's den neatly typewritten 
references to the thoughtlessness of the 
young. She dips her claws into the blood 
of friends and enemies alike, and, when 
brought to bay, disappears into her den 
and becomes — an Early Victorian lady of 
gentle humility. 

Yet for us who live just outside the cave, 
the dragon has her very human side. I re- 
member once coming home late one after- 
noon, and as I climbed the stairs I was sur- 
prised to hear above me voices raised in 
altercation. The leading voice I easily rec- 
217 



EPILOGUE 

ognized as that of a maid who had offended 
and was being, quite properly, scolded. 
But somehow the maid was not quite as 
subdued by the little dragon's rebuke as the 
readers of this book might be led to expect. 
Protest waxed into indignation on the part 
of the domestic, indignation into invective, 
and invective into vituperation. Fearing 
the next change might be to personal vio- 
lence, I sprang up the stairs. As I reached 
the last flight, at the top of which the bat- 
tle raged, I heard the quick patter of the 
little dragon's feet, and, with a reiterated 
"That will do, Margaret, that will do," 
she retired hurriedly into her favourite 
niece's room, slamming the door on the 
echoes of her opponent's rage which still 
quivered in the blue air. Never shall I for- 
get either the dignity of her voice or her 
hurried bolt into sanctuary. 

You see the dragon is human, after all. 
We all know and appreciate it, and though 
we squirm when prodded with her pen, we 
are proud of the little dragon and love her 
even though she kills us — with laughing. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
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